


The Quandum Quandary: Harry and Draco’s Month of Mayhem

by violetclarity



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bickering, Biology, Communication, Consent, Discussion of Animal Gestation, Explicit Sexual Content, Friendship, Getting Back Together, H/D Erised 2019, Happy Ending, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Professors, Humor, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Magical Animals, Magical Theory, Marsupial Birth, POV Alternating, Past friends with benefits, Pet Pregnancy, Pets, Pining, Post-Hogwarts, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Professor Draco Malfoy, Professor Harry Potter, Shopkeeper Millicent Bulstrode, Unusual Situations, Ward Expert Hermione Granger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:40:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21611431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetclarity/pseuds/violetclarity
Summary: McGonagall’s out to get Harry and Draco, with a laundry list of new duties for them now that Hogwarts’ contraceptive wards have fallen. Hermione’s been called in to fix them, but in the meantime Harry and Draco are patrolling the corridors, babysitting owl nests, and trawling for giant squid eggs in the Great Lake. Plus their pets, both rare Australian marsupials called Quandums, are having a baby together.It would all be easier to handle if they weren’t still thinking about their casual physical relationship, which ended years ago.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter, Millicent Bulstrode & Draco Malfoy
Comments: 54
Kudos: 426
Collections: H/D Erised 2019





	1. Week One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elle Gray (Elle_Gray)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elle_Gray/gifts).



> Dear **ElleGray,** I hope you like this story. As soon as I read this scenario in your sign-up post, combined with your requests for pets as secondary characters and ‘bizarre shit happening in the background,’ my mind was running away with this story. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Huge thank-yous to: **coriesocks** for answering my Elle questions; my two wonderful betas, **frnklymrshnkly** and **whiskyandwildflowers** for cheering me on, encouraging my ridiculousness, listening to weird animal facts, and naming the Quandums; the HD Erised mods for organizing this fabulous fest and being so accommodating when this took longer than expected to complete!
> 
> I did a lot of research on animal gestation to write this fic, and then totally ignored some of it for the sake of story purposes. My justification is: magic! Sorry if I’ve offended any biologists out there—I did try!

****

**Wednesday**

In the five years Harry’s spent teaching Care of Magical Creatures, he’s never felt so much like a student as he does at this moment. His life as a professor is vastly different than life as a student was—he lives in a comfortable suite of rooms on the ground floor of the castle, rather than Gryffindor tower; he spends most of his days outside rather than sitting in stuffy, dimly-lit classrooms; there is no genocidal wizard trying to kill him—but in this moment, he’s experiencing a vicious flashback to being sixteen and sitting on the same side of this desk, across from Professor Dumbledore.

Or to when he was eleven, being stared down by an irate McGonagall after she found him traversing the castle grounds in the dark. Draco had been there that time, too.

When she first found them at the boundary of the Forbidden Forest, frozen in place by magic neither of them understood, she took her glasses off and rubbed her temples, broadcasting her exhaustion—at the late hour, and at their general existence—quite clearly. But in the time it took Pomona to examine Harry and Draco and declare them healthy and hale—it was only static electricity that was making their hair stand on end, she assured them—McGonagall rallied. Now she stares at them sharply over the top of her glasses, and it’s all Harry can do to keep from shrinking back in his seat.

“Gentlemen.” McGonagall sighs. “I don’t know what you were _trying_ to do when I found you.” Draco opens his mouth, and she raises a hand to stop him. “Nor do I wish to know, Draco.”

“Sorry, Minerva,” Draco murmurs. Harry shoots him a look. _Minerva._ He can be such a prat sometimes. McGonagall’s told Harry he can call her by her first name dozens of times, and the most he can bring himself to say to her face is Headmistress.

She frowns at them and continues on. “I don’t know what you were trying to do,” she says, “but the results have unfortunately become quite clear. The contraceptive wards of Hogwarts have fallen.”

McGonagall pauses, clearly waiting for a reaction. Harry glances sideways at Draco, nervously, and is glad he seems equally confused.

“I’m sorry, the what?” Harry finally says.

“The contraceptive wards,” McGonagall repeats.

Draco, this time. “The _what?_ ”

McGonagall huffs, exasperated. “You didn’t really think it was a coincidence that there’s never been a teenage pregnancy at Hogwarts, did you?”

Harry looks to Draco again, but he’s frowning, expression thoughtful, so Harry drags his eyes back to McGonagall. He’s honestly never thought about it—besides a few intense snogging sessions with Ginny, sex was never high on Harry’s to-do list as a student, and now as a professor, he prefers to keep his knowledge about his students’ private lives as minimal as possible.

Not noticing—or more likely ignoring—Harry’s confusion, McGonagall continues. “Not to mention the pets, and the mice. The owls. The pixie infestation on the fifth floor was finally getting under control, and now that they’re able to breed we’ll have to start from scratch.” She shakes her head. “You two have opened quite the can of worms, you know.”

Harry bites his lip. He feels bad, really. They hadn’t been trying to cause any problems, after all. They’d only been arguing about—

“We didn’t mean to cause any harm,” Draco says, too attuned to Harry’s moods for either of their well-beings, in Harry’s opinion. “Can I offer any assistance in putting the wards back up?”

McGonagall’s eyebrows reach up towards her hairline. “Putting the wards back up?” She shakes her head. “This isn’t as simple as the wards that a homeowner might set up, or even wards at a familial estate, which would be tied to one specific bloodline. The wards of Hogwarts have been improved upon by every Headmaster and Headmistress who has sat in this office, and the contraceptive wards themselves have been worked on by no less than ten wizards in the past two centuries. They naturally weaken on breaks when students aren’t in the castle, in order to give our animal populations time to regenerate, but they’ve never been completely broken.” She sighs. “We’ll be calling in a specialist to deal with that, but in the meantime there will be _other_ tasks related to the issue that will need to be addressed.”

“Perhaps we can help with those,” Draco says smoothly.

“Anything we can do, Headmistress.”

McGonagall smiles benignly. “That’s good to hear,” she says, “because there will be quite a few things coming up that need to be dealt with.” She drops a roll of parchment on the table between Draco and Harry. With a flick of her wand, it unrolls, the end dangling off the edge of the table.

On the parchment is a list. A long list.

“Oh my,” Draco says.

“Some of these will be put on a rota for all the professors to participate in, but not all of them are that important. And since the two of you are, by your own admission, responsible for this mishap, I’m sure you won’t mind pitching in a little more?”

Harry swallows nervously. “Of course,” he says, as though they’re really being given a choice.

Draco’s expression is dour, his mouth turned down at the corner, but he echoes Harry’s sentiment.

“Wonderful!” McGonagall smiles brightly, re-rolling the parchment and performing a complicated bit of magic that splits it into two folded pieces, which she hands to them. Harry takes a peak at his and gulps again, filled with a wave of déjà vu. It’s his schedule, all of the classes he teaches as well as his once-weekly session with the Gryffindor Quidditch team, but his free time has been filled with McGonagall’s small, precise handwriting. On Wednesday, when Harry’s last class of the day lets out at two-thirty and he typically enjoys a relaxing afternoon tea and catches up on his chores, he’ll instead be tackling the fifth-floor pixie infestation with Filius. Saturday morning, one of only two days of the week when Harry is able to sleep in, he and Draco will be joining Horace to brew oral contraceptive potions to administer to students’ pets. And apparently Prefect patrols are no longer considered good enough, because Harry will be prowling the corridors to catch any students out after curfew on Thursday and Sunday nights—both times with Draco. Dread curls in his stomach at the thought of so much one-on-one time with Draco.

He glances over, hoping for a conspirital moan, but Draco’s eyes are firmly on his own parchment, mouth still twisted down into the same frown.

“I will inform you of anything else that comes up which you are required for,” McGonagall says. “That’s all for now.”

Recognizing the dismissal, Harry stands, bidding McGonagall farewell. Draco follows him, nodding at their supervisor, but doesn’t speak until they’ve descended the spiral staircase and are back in the Great Hall.

Draco brandishes his schedule in front of him, gripping it so tightly he creases the thick paper. “This is ridiculous! We’re being reduced to babysitters. I didn’t study graduate-level Defensive Magic for three years to provide a free clinic for student pets.” He shakes his head. “This is _not_ what I signed up for when I took this job.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “This isn’t what _any_ of us signed up for, Malfoy. But when things like this happen, we all need to pitch in.”

Draco levels a flat look at him. “But everyone’s not pitching in equally, Potter. The two of us are going to be pitching in a _lot_ more, by the looks of it.”

“Well, it is kind of our fault,” Harry says. Draco huffs, but makes no retort, which means he knows Harry is right but is going to be stubborn and refuse to say it out loud.

“What have you got on your schedule, anyway? Besides all the shit with me, that is.”

“Pixie infestation with Filius. First one won’t be till next week, though; it’s Wednesday afternoons.”

Draco raises his eyebrows. “Guess I should consider myself lucky for the pet clinic after all,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow for nightly patrol, then?”

“You will,” Harry confirms. He isn’t disappointed when the only goodbye Draco gives him is a nod before he leaves in the direction of the third floor.

It’s not like they’re friends, so Harry has no right to be disappointed. In fact, that conversation was one of the longest and most cordial they’ve had yet this year. But that doesn’t stop the way his heart falls when Draco leaves. It’s Harry’s own fault they aren’t friends, which makes his disappointment doubly ridiculous. They were friends, for a brief stint several years ago, before Harry accepted his position at Hogwarts, but they quickly transitioned from ‘friends’ to ‘friends who had sex,’ with more emphasis on the sex. When Harry moved to Scotland, they said they would keep in touch, but of course they didn’t. 

He’d lost touch with a lot of people when he moved: the distance from London to Hogsmeade didn’t seem so long when he traveled it for a job interview, and with Floo travel and Apparition, life as a professor was much easier than life as a student. But even though he could physically get away from Hogwarts, in reality it didn’t prove as easy as Harry’d expected. There were always assignments to grade and lessons to prep, animals that needed checking in on. Students who had questions or needed extra tutoring, colleagues who wanted his assistance with some project or other. Getting outside of the Hogwarts bubble took effort that Harry often didn’t want to expend; it was easy to settle into life inside the bounds of the castle, just as he had when he was a student.

And in Draco’s case, well… Harry might have let them lose touch a little more intentionally than he had with everyone else. He hadn’t visited him over the summer after his first year teaching, even though Draco had suggested they might go on holiday together, somewhere warm where clothes were optional. Because he and Draco—they’d been perched on the precipice of _something,_ something besides just sex, before Harry had gone away. But when he wasn’t seeing Draco regularly, Harry found it much harder to convince himself that that _something_ might be worth it. Sure, he told himself, they had great chemistry, but was there really anything else there? When Draco had accepted the Defense position last year, Harry had hoped they might reconnect as friends, but it was clearly too late; Draco had been chilly and distant with Harry all through the previous school year.

Which is nothing more than he deserves, Harry thinks morosely as he opens the door to his room.

He is greeted by the happy yips of Tibby, his Quandum, and smiles.

“Hello, Tibs, did you have a good day?” Harry leans over to pet her, scratching at the base of her skull the way she likes, and she happily yips again, leaning into his touch. Tibby has the run of the castle and grounds, with a specially warded entrance into Harry’s quarters, but she is usually waiting for him here at the end of the day, preferring to be inside with him at night. His meeting with McGonagall after dinner has delayed him coming home, and Quandums have a wonderful sense of time, so she must have been wondering what was keeping him.

Behind Tibby there’s a second set of footsteps, and Mephisto follows her into the room, standing on his hind legs and putting his front paws on Harry’s thigh to compete for attention. Harry obligingly scratches under Mephisto’s chin, shaking his head.

“Mephisto, you should really go home before Malfoy comes knocking on my door again,” Harry sighs. Mephisto is Draco’s Quandum, and—not surprising, as the only two of their species at Hogwarts, and probably in all of Scotland—he and Tibby have become friends. It’s a constant source of annoyance for Draco, as is the fact that Harry owns a Quandum at all, but Harry thinks it’s sweet, and has long since adjusted the wards to his room to allow not just Tibby, but Mephisto inside as well. Draco will never admit it, but Harry knows he’s done the same, because he’s seen Tibby and Mephisto in Draco’s quarters on the Marauder’s Map when Draco himself isn’t there.

Now Mephisto yowls, getting down from Harry’s leg and walking around behind Tibby to sniff at her tall, bat-like ear. She flicks them to scare him away, and pushes forwards, happy to have all of Harry’s petting attention again. He rolls his eyes as he pets her, running his hands over her steel-blue fur and down the length of her tapered tail. Mephisto, realizing he’s been out-played, tries to butt in again; his fur is a mix of blue and turquoise, vibrant in comparison to Tibby. When he tries to push Tibby’s head out of the way so Harry will pet between his ears, Tibby sneezes at him, a miniature cloud of smoke rolling out of her nostrils.

“That’s enough, now, remember he’s your friend,” Harry says, scooping Tibby up. She rests her chin on his shoulder, happily settling into his arms, and Harry snorts—this was probably her plan all along. Quandums are simply too smart for their own good.

Mephisto yips, leaning up on Harry’s leg again, and Harry shakes his knee to dislodge him, gently ushering the Quandum towards his door.

“You know I love having you here, but I think Malfoy’s in a bad enough mood tonight without you missing as well,” he says, opening the door to his quarters. “And I really don’t fancy going another round with him tonight if he comes here looking for you, so go on…” He nudges Mephisto towards the door, and after a last mournful look, Mephisto turns to go. Harry watches him trot off in the direction of the stairs before closing the door again.

Tibby shows no sign of wanting to get down, so Harry keeps her propped up with one hand as he makes his way into his kitchenette to brew a pot of tea. He sighs as he thinks about Draco sitting alone in his room, waiting for Mephisto to come home, and hopes that the Quandum decides to make a quick return to Draco’s chambers. Tibby gently butts the side of Harry’s head and he smiles, fetching a mug from the shelf. He may have stuffed it up with Draco, but at least Tibby always likes him.

****

**Thursday**

Draco is awoken Thursday morning by Mephistopheles’s paws on his back as the Quandum walks over him.

He groans and shifts, pushing up on his elbows, and Mephistopheles yelps in protest, jumping down off the bed. Turning his head, Draco catches sight of his alarm clock, and sees that it’s only five minutes before he has to get up. On the floor by his bedside, Mephistopheles snorts sparks, and Draco rolls his eyes.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he says, voice scratchy from sleep. “I’ll feed you as soon as I get up, like I always do.”

He flops down on his pillow, watching as Mephistopheles paces back and forth impatiently.

“I’m not going to get out of bed any earlier,” he says. “I know what your plan is, Mephisto. First you wake me up five minutes early, then ten. It’s not going to work.”

With a yawn, Mephistopheles turns and leaves the bedroom, as if to protest Draco’s words. Except he’s a Quandum, and can’t understand what Draco is saying.

Draco rolls onto his back, pressing his palms into his eyes as he squeezes them shut. Carrying on conversations with his pet as though Mephistopheles might respond—he’s been living alone too long.

It’s a strange thing, to think of being alone when Hogwarts houses hundreds of students and dozens of professors, but that’s how Draco feels—lonely. The students that make up the majority of the school population are a loud, distant entity—he knows them all by name, but their interactions begin and end in the classroom, and even the oldest students baffle Draco more and more every year. He finds himself watching them as they giggle over crushes, oblivious to the fact that their teacher has noticed they’re ignoring their work, and wonders—was he ever so young, so carefree? And though he loves his job, it doesn’t allow much time for socialization. He lives in a remote castle and has to be on call at all hours of the day and night. He and Millie make a special effort to get together often, even though she still lives in London, but the rest of his friends have settled elsewhere in Europe, and he only keeps up with them via letters and the occasional summertime holiday.

And as for his fellow professors…well. They respect him as a colleague, and he they, but none of them really _like_ him. He’s not friends with any of them the way that Pomona and Poppy are, sitting together at the staff table, having drinks in each others’ rooms. There’s too many barriers between Draco and the others for that kind of camaraderie to bloom. Half of the staff taught Draco when he was a student, and remember his questionable behavior and bad attitude. The other half keep their distance because of Draco’s history during the war, even if he’s made amends to the point that Professor McGonagall trusts him to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Then there’s Harry, and, well. That hardly warrants thinking about.

Before Draco can get caught up in those thoughts, his alarm blares, and Mephistopheles comes barreling back into the room, yowling. He knows that sound, and Draco laughs as he gets up, Mephistopheles circling him as Draco crosses the room for his dressing gown and slippers, then shuffles to the kitchen to feed his Quandum. He measures out the food and hits it with a brief _Incendio_ before setting it down, and Mephisto gobbles it up happily as Draco pours himself a cup of water. He’s not very hungry, his stomach still in knots from the conversation with the Headmistress the night before—more assigned duties, especially duties he _has_ to complete with Harry, are enough to inspire quite a bit of dread—but since it’s a weekday, he’s expected to make an appearance in the Great Hall for breakfast. And besides, his first class is at nine; it’s not as if he’d be able to curl up in his rooms for very long the way he wants to, anyway.

Draco returns to his room for a brief shower before throwing on an old set of robes—dark green, traditional cut, expected. Harry teaches in dungarees sometimes, but Draco can’t bring himself to push the Hogwarts dress code to such an extent, especially when he doesn’t have the excuse of working outside with animals. Mephistopheles sits on Draco’s bed, watching him through the open door while he washes his face and brushes his teeth, and allows Draco to scratch his head for a few moments before he walks up to one of the pillows and makes a show of curling up on it.

“Of course you’ve got to sleep there, don’t you?” Draco shakes his head. From the research he’d done before purchasing Mephistopheles, he’d been lead to believe that Quandums were an active, energetic species, but if that’s true than Mephistopheles must be the laziest of the bunch. He tires himself out hounding Draco for food in the early hours, and then sleeps away the rest of the morning. He’s allowed anywhere in the castle, and Draco has warded him to protect against insects and disease, if he wanted to explore outside, but most of the time he prefers the quiet of Draco’s rooms, occasionally accompanying Draco to his classroom (much to his students’ delight).

The only exception to Mephistopheles’s laziness, is, unfortunately, Tibby. Bad enough that Harry has to have the same pet as Draco does—and he got his for free as a gift from Lovegood, whereas Draco had to pay a breeder from Melbourne to escort Mephistopheles all the way to Edinburgh—but their pets are _friends._ It’s understandable, of course, but it still irks Draco. Every time Mephistopheles saunters through his warded pet door late at night, and Draco knows he was in Harry’s rooms with Tibby, he’s hit with a wave of jealousy, and then a wave of annoyance with himself for being jealous of an animal. There’s been times when Mephistopheles has been with him when he’s run across Harry in the corridors, and the way Mephisto trots to greet Harry, and how Harry smiles when he sees the Quandum—

Well. Sometimes Draco wishes Harry smiled like that when he saw him, is all.

Draco glances at the clock on the bedside table and realizes he’s spent too long lost in thought; with a last wave to Mephistopheles, he hurries out the door and down the stairs, weaving among the straggling students also on their way to the Great Hall. He nearly collides with a group of fifth years who are leaving as he’s entering, and after making sure they’re alright, he looks up and catches sight of a bushy head sitting between Harry and McGonagall.

Why is Hermione Granger sitting at the Hogwarts staff table?

He heads towards the other end of the table, where there are two empty seats next to Flitwick and Vector, hoping to avoid the Gryffindor reunion, but before he can sit down, McGonagall calls his name and waves him over.

He edges behind the other professors to reach the Headmistress, and cringes with mortification as she Conjures a chair for him and insists he sit in it. He does (what other choice does he have?), and reaches for a piece of toast as McGonagall gestures to Granger.

“Draco, you remember Hermione,” she says, as though they met at a cocktail party last month rather than having gone to school together for six years and, oh yes, fought in a war against each other.

“Of course,” he says, nodding at Granger, then Harry, before he goes back to buttering his breakfast.

“I hope you won’t mind if we discuss a little business over breakfast,” McGonagall says. 

Draco shakes his head. “Not a problem, Minerva.”

Granger takes this as an invitation to begin talking. “Professor McGonagall has asked me to come in and help with the problem of the wards,” she says, and Draco feels a momentary spike of shame for his casual use of the Headmistress’s given name. “That’s my specialty, you see. I usually work with the Ministry, but I’m technically an independent contractor; when I heard what had happened, I took a leave of absence from the government so I could put all my energy towards this case.”

“Hermione will be staying in the castle while she helps us restore the contraceptive wards,” McGonagall says.

Draco forces himself to smile. “How wonderful.”

“It’s a fascinating case,” Granger says. “I mean, the age of the wards is enough to make it significant in and of itself—you don’t often see magic that endures for so long! Of course, given the magical strength of the castle, it isn’t _as_ surprising, but the way the wards had been layered onto and built up over time makes it even more complicated…”

“Not before breakfast, please, Hermione,” Harry says, elbowing her, and she laughs.

“You know, Harry, not everyone is as reluctant to learn about the _why_ behind magic as you are,” she teases. “I bet Malfoy finds this interesting—don’t you, Malfoy?”

Draco blinks, caught off guard by _Hermione Granger_ calling him by name. Are they friendly with each other now? How is he meant to respond to this?

He swallows down his bite of toast and pushes the worry away. “I do find it interesting,” he admits, because it’s true—it’s not his specialty, but wards are a type of protective magic, and it’s hard not to find Hogwarts fascinating, especially when you live there nine months of the year and have an interest in magical history, as Draco does.

Granger grins, elbowing Harry back. “See?” Harry laughs and rubs his arm, good-natured.

McGonagall gives a wry smile. “Draco can assist you if you find yourself in need of a second wand, Hermione,” she offers, then looks between him and Harry. “You have patrol tonight at nine-thirty, don’t forget,” she reminds them, before standing and sweeping out of the room.

And just like that, any hint of a good mood Draco is feeling about the prospect of exploring Hogwarts’ magical history vanishes.

****

**Saturday**

Hermione is enjoying her temporary return to Hogwarts too much, in Harry’s opinion, although at the same time he doesn’t know why he’s surprised. He was looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday morning—since it’s the weekend, he’s not expected to be at breakfast, and he slept terribly on Thursday night after a tense patrol with Draco—but Hermione cornered him Friday after dinner and asked him to meet her for breakfast so they could catch up, as she’s been busy in meetings with McGonagall since arriving on Thursday morning.

It’s not like they have much to catch up on—Harry sees Hermione and Ron often enough—but he obliges her, and walks into the Great Hall on Saturday at earlier-than-he’d-like-to-be-awake (okay, half past nine) to find Hermione nursing a cup of coffee with _Le Monde Magique_ open in front of her.

She closes it when Harry sits down next to her, leaning over to give him a half-hug in greeting. “Good morning!”

“Good morning,” Harry says, leaning past Hermione to grab the coffee carafe.

“Did you sleep alright? You look tired.”

Harry shakes his head. “It’s residual at this point. Ongoing professorial sleep deprivation. Now I understand why Snape was always in such a bad mood.” He snorts at his own joke, ignoring Hermione shaking her head. “How about you? Where does McGonagall have you staying, anyway?”

“I slept well,” Hermione says. At Harry’s arrival, a platter of scrambled eggs, rack of toast, and bowl of cut fruit had appeared on the table; now Hermione neatly serves herself some eggs. “I’m up on the third floor, I think there’s quite a few professors’ quarters in the same corridor.”

Harry nods. “Malfoy’s rooms are up there,” he says.

“Yes, I think I saw his Quandum last night, wandering around.” She selects a piece of toast and pulls the pot of jam closer. “You said he had one as well, right?”

“Mephisto,” Harry confirms.

Hermione looks at him with confusion. “What?”

“Mephisto. That’s Draco’s Quandum’s name,” Harry explains. When Hermione continues to blink at him, he continues. “His full name’s Mephistopheles.”

Hermione huffs a little laugh, shaking her head. “Mephistopheles. That’s clever.”

“Ridiculous name for a pet,” Harry disagrees, taking the time to serve his own breakfast.

“Oh, certainly.” Hermione nods. She cocks her head, expression morphing into that familiar calculating one that Harry knows too well. “How are things between the two of you, anyway?”

Harry shrugs, resolutely ignoring the way his heart beats harder in his chest. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Hermione says.

“I don’t.” Harry shakes his head.

She rolls her eyes. “When we were all in uni, you know. It seemed like you two were starting to get along. And now you both work here, and we never hear you mention his name. I’d practically forgotten he worked here until he came down to breakfast the other day.”

“You don’t forget things like that.”

“Allow me to exaggerate for dramatic effect, then.” She grabs his wrist, squeezing. “Plus there’s the fact that you two caused this whole mess—McGonagall never explained—”

An owl swoops down in front of their paper, dropping _The Daily Prophet_ right on top of Hermione’s eggs. Harry laughs as she splutters, Vanishing runny egg from the newsprint and getting herself a new plate.

Taking a bite of the fresh eggs, she shakes her head. “Oh, what was I saying?” She looks sidelong at Harry. “There’s really nothing going on between you and Draco?”

Harry pulls his hand away, narrowing his eyes. “Did Ron put you up to this?”

“No.” Hermione’s eyes go wide and guilty. For someone who has an amazing poker face when lying to authority figures and government officials, she’s shit at keeping secrets from her friends. Or maybe she simply expended all of her good-secret-keeping energy when they were teenagers, and will be forced to be a bad liar the rest of her life to make up for it.

Harry feels that way, sometimes. Like he used up all of his bravery, all of his courage and luck, before he turned eighteen, and now that his life is boring and ordinary, he doesn’t know how to go after what he wants.

He forces his thoughts away from the morose, narrowing his eyes at Hermione. “I don’t believe you.”

“He didn’t, honest,” she says. She smiles, sheepish. “But we did have a bet…”

“I knew it!” Harry shakes his head. 

“I bet that you and Malfoy were friends now, and Ron bet that you still thought he was up to something.”

“I can’t believe you’re betting on my life,” Harry groans.

Hermione raises her hands. “Ron was the one who suggested it! And it’s not really _so_ ridiculous. You know you’ve always been…intense about Malfoy, Harry.”

“I know.” It’s true, what Hermione said. She just doesn’t know the direction the intensity had once taken. Hermione sees the way Harry and Draco avoid each other and thinks it’s because they haven’t outgrown their school time disagreements—she doesn’t realize they’re caught in a not-quite-lovers’ quarrel. Harry has no desire to explain, either.

“So…you two aren’t friends, then?” Hermione asks. Harry can tell she’s trying to make her voice gentle, and he doesn’t want to make her feel bad, but he’s not sure he has the patience for this conversation at the moment, especially knowing what is waiting for him later on in the day.

“Eager to win that bet, are you?” Harry teases. “I’m sorry to cut this short, but I should probably get going—I have a stack of essays waiting to be graded, and I have to meet with Slughorn and Malfoy after lunch.”

Hermione’s face falls a bit, but she doesn’t say anything to stop him. Harry feels a bit bad—Hermione loves Hogwarts in a different way than Harry, and for her this must be a bit like a vacation, back on the old stomping grounds to relive the glory days. But this is Harry’s life—he still loves the school, but it doesn’t hold as much magic as when he was young, especially now that it’s his place of work.

Still, he doesn’t want to kill her enthusiasm. “I’ll make it up to you,” he promises. “Dinner in Hogsmeade this week with you and Ron? My treat.” They have the money to pay for it, but Harry wants to assuage the last vestiges of guilt he feels.

Hermione smiles. “That would be nice. I’ll ask him what day is best when we Floo tonight.”

“Alright, that’s good,” Harry says, and makes his retreat out of the Great Hall.

***

Draco drags his feet getting down to the dungeons, taking more time than is needed to prepare Mephistopheles’s breakfast, then pet him after he eats. He usually likes to be early, but Horace is notorious among the Hogwarts staff for always running late, and the last thing Draco wants is to find himself alone in the dungeons with Harry while they wait for the Potions Master to arrive.

He doesn’t like that he’s been assigned to potion-making duty with Harry at all. It feels so juvenile, like they’re serving detention. Combined with the recent resurgence of his feelings for Harry, he thinks he might as well be trapped in one of his fifth-year fantasies, late at night in an empty classroom where loathing can easily boil over into lust. Vaguely, Draco reflects that he hates himself, and puts on the bulkiest jumper he owns before leaving his rooms for the dungeons.

It turns out he needn’t have worried, because when he gets there Harry has yet to arrive, although he comes in the door just a few minutes later, saving Draco from making too much small talk with Horace. And because they are fellow professors now, not students, Horace ushers them into the smaller lab that he uses for brewing.

“These potions all have the same base, but they have slightly different ingredients to make them suitable for different species,” Horace explains, handing Draco and Harry each a sheet with directions. “As students are only allowed to bring owls, cats, and toads to school, and Professor McGonagall stressed to me that her first priority was contraceptive potions for the pets, rather than the stray animals that find their way onto the grounds. Since there are three of us and three varieties of potion, I thought we would each brew one.”

Draco nods, examining the parchment he’s been given. It’s the potion for owls, and the end contains a nifty bit of spellwork to inject the potion into a gelatin mouse in order to convince the owl to eat it. His fingertips itch, excited to perform the magic.

Beside him, Harry is rubbing the edge of his parchment with a slight frown, but he snaps to attention when Horace claps his hands together, smiling at them both.

“I trust that plan suits, gentlemen?”

“Fine,” Draco says. Harry just nods, but Horace takes it as a response, Summoning the ingredients they will need onto a central table as he approaches his own cauldron. There are only three workbenches, which means Draco has to set up across from Harry, who’s frown deepens as he selects his ingredients and begins preparing them. Horace moves with the quick confidence of someone who’s been brewing all his life, and though Draco’s motions start off slow, they are sure and grow faster as his muscle memory kicks in.

Harry is not chopping so smoothly. He macerates the pickled salamander’s tail when he’s meant to be mincing it, and even from across the room Draco can see that his peppermint root is chopped into unequal chunks, which will affect the cooking time when he puts the potion over the flame. Horace seems not to notice, keeping up a jovial stream of conversation with Draco and Harry (mostly Harry) as they zest Buddah’s Hand and shred willow bark.

Harry’s starting to fall behind Draco and Horace, and he’s casting nervous glances at the Potions Master, waiting for him to notice. Horace is extremely self-centered, so it’s taking longer than one might expect, but he is bound to notice at some point. Draco remembers the time when, lying in Harry’s bed after a particularly good round of sex and still slightly tipsy from the club they’d been at before, Harry had confessed that the only reason he’d been any good at Potions in sixth year was because of a handbook that once belonged to Snape. Draco was drunk enough to find that amusing instead of annoying, and he’d laughed himself silly until Harry had silenced him with a kiss. When Harry’s eyes meet his as Draco starts to set up his cauldron and add his base ingredients, he knows they are thinking of the same thing.

“Harry, m’boy, what’s slowing you down?” Horace drops his hands onto the edge of Harry’s workbench, leaning over to see what he’s doing, and Harry startles, dropping his paring knife. Draco watches him stutter out a response, and where once he would have laughed at the situation, now he pities Harry. It seems the kernel of bitterness Draco’s been carrying, stoked and fed by the way Harry had ended their dalliance and ignored Draco for several years after, doesn’t make Draco immune to feeling sorry for him.

“He thought I took after my mum,” he remembers Harry saying, lost in his thoughts. “No one ever thinks I take after my mum, you know.”

The instructions Horace gave them clearly state that the peppermint root should be added two pieces at a time, in order to monitor the color of the potion; they are meant to stop adding when the potion turns yellow, or else they run the risk of an implosion. Carefully, Draco lifts the bowl that holds his peppermint root, and drops it all into the cauldron. He has one moment to regret the gelatinous mice that will never be before he steps back and waits for the potion to implode.

It’s a muffled, booming sound, still unpleasantly loud, and it shoots a splash of half-done potion to the ceiling, raining lime green droplets down on Draco, Horace, and Harry. They turn to look at him—Horace shocked and dismayed, Harry surprised and…maybe grateful?

Draco catches his eye for the briefest moment in a smile, and yes, that’s definitely a grateful smile. It does things to Draco’s heart, and he has to watch himself carefully to make sure he isn’t smiling back when he speaks. 

“Oops.”

****

**Sunday**

Tibby insists on accompanying Harry on his Sunday night patrol with Draco. As he prepares to leave his room, putting on what he thinks of as his ‘professor robes’ instead of the joggers and jumper he’s been wearing all afternoon, she watches him with interest from her bed in the corner of his room. When he approaches the door, she runs towards him, butting his knee and going up on her hind legs to encourage him to pet her.

“Do you want to go out, Tibs?” Harry asks. Although she can come and go at will, Tibby prefers to have Harry let her out when he is home. He unlocks the door and she scampers past him, but when he reaches the end of the corridor that leads into the grand foyer of the castle, she’s there waiting for him. She trots along at his side, behaving more like a well-trained dog than a not-at-all-trained Quandum, as he makes his way up to the first floor landing where he and Draco agreed to meet.

“This is odd behavior, Mephistopheles, you’ve never wanted to accompany me on patrol before.” Draco’s voice carries down the corridor ahead of him, and Harry snorts when he hears Mephisto’s answering yip. Tibby occasionally comes with him when he patrols—or perhaps more accurately, sometimes he runs into her while patrolling and she deigns to follow him tack to his quarters. She’s certainly never left the room with him like this before.

The reason becomes clear when Draco and Mephisto round the corner, and Mephisto immediately trots up to Tibby, inclining his head to gently butt against her side. With his large, bat-like ears lowered instead of standing up vertically as is their natural position, the action looks almost like a bow. Tibby yips a greeting, twin tails swishing as she stands and circles Mephisto, rubbing their sides together in greeting. Tibby’s coloring is more subtle than Mephisto’s—a gunmetal blue so dark it could easily be confused with gray, with only subtle striations of cream, while Mephisto’s royal blue and turquoise gradient bring to mind a peacock.

Harry looks up to see that Draco, like him, has been caught up in watching the two Quandums interact.

“You didn’t want to come with me at all, you just wanted to see your friend, hmm?” Draco says. Mephisto makes no response, and Draco snorts, rolling his eyes. “Typical.” He looks at Harry, expression painted with reluctance. “I guess it’s nice that they’re friends, being so far from the others of their kind, and all.”

“I think this is mating behavior, actually,” Harry says, as Tibby breaks away from the circling dance they’ve been doing with a high whine and takes off for the other end of the corridor. Mephisto bolts after her.

Draco makes a faint noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “Honestly, Potter.”

Harry was only been half-kidding—he’s not as familiar with the behavior of Quandums as he is with British and European magical creatures, given that they are native to Australia and New Zealand. Tibby had been a gift from Luna, who found Tibby abandoned as a baby while she was traveling. But despite the biological difference of Quandums being marsupials, their behavior is most similar to the European Kneazle, and their courting ritual consists of a drawn-out period of hide-and-seek, the male proving his hunting prowess by finding the female in more and more hidden locations until she finally consents to mate with him.

Draco probably won’t appreciate Harry’s explanation, however, so Harry says nothing, falling into step beside Draco as he starts off in the opposite direction from where Tibby and Mephisto ran.

“The Headmistress said she wanted us to patrol for an hour and a half, so I’m thinking the library, then hit the outside of all the dorms to catch any late stragglers. Then the kitchens, the study rooms on the fourth floor, and all the dorm entrances one more time?”

Harry checks his watch—it’s five minutes to curfew now, and by the time they reach the library, it will be past the hour when all students should be in their respective common rooms—or even better, in bed. “That’s a good plan,” Harry says. If his student self could see him now, he muses, remembering all the times he, Hermione, and Ron had been out of their dorm after hours—trips to the Room of Requirement, to the Restricted Section of the library, sneaking up to the Astronomy Tower to pass Norbert off to Charlie as early as their first year—

“Shit,” Harry says, casting a sidelong glance at Draco. “We should probably hit the Astronomy Tower, too.”

Draco’s spine straightens, and he casts Harry a sharp look. The tower’s been much repaired in the last ten-plus years, but he knows they are thinking of the same thing: the night Harry had stood, Petrified and invisible, as he watched Draco fail to kill Dumbledore. The fact that they’d both been up there when Snape had arrived, and followed through where Draco couldn’t.

“I’m not in the habit of revisiting that location,” Draco says, words crisp and quick. “I didn’t realize you were, either.”

“I’m _not,_ ” Harry snaps back, annoyed at the implication. “But if we want to catch students fucking, that’s where we’re going to find them.”

“If you insist,” Draco drawls.

Harry rolls his eyes, dropping back a few steps to walk behind Draco as they start in the direction of the library. He knows the holier-than-thou attitude Draco affects when things like this come up is just a defense mechanism, his way of pushing the conversation away from topics he considers dangerous, back to safer ground—more neutral arguing—but that doesn’t stop it from getting under Harry’s skin. He wishes he and Draco could have real conversations again—about the war, about _anything,_ the way they had those few months in London before Harry had left for Hogwarts. He misses it. Naked and half-asleep, with the lights dimmed and Draco’s hair managing to catch whatever moonlight filtered in through the window, he felt like he could tell Draco anything.

There are a few Slytherins rushing out of the library with half-packed bags when they approach, and they look up with fearful eyes when they see Harry and Draco, but Draco just tells them to go straight back to their dorm and waves them along. Harry watches the interaction silently, the way the students thank Draco by name, one even turning around to wave at him before they go. Draco waves back, expression wry, though it sours when he turns back around and catches Harry’s eyes on him.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Harry lies, repressing his desire to smile. Draco’s good with the students—better than he realizes. Harry’s heard him make disparaging remarks in the staff room about how none of them like him but he’s not here to be liked, but Harry knows that isn’t true—the younger students might be put off by the serious aura Draco projects in the classroom, but as they get older they grow to appreciate his patience and different approaches to explaining the same concepts. The students in Slytherin, especially, adore him. Harry expects that Horace will retire in the next few years, and knows McGonagall would be a fool not to ask Draco to step in as the new Head of House.

Draco narrows his eyes in disbelief, but says nothing. By unspoken agreement, they go to Ravenclaw Tower first. Their footsteps echo loudly in the quiet corridors; Harry has the teacherish urge to hush someone, but they aren’t talking, or even stomping particularly loud; it’s just the night-time quiet that makes their noises feel inappropriate. They see no students until they reach the corridor below Gryffindor Tower. It’s lined with tapestries, and suspicious kissing noises are coming from behind one of them.

Draco comes to a stop, turning to look at Harry and jerking his head at the wall. Harry nods, and Draco jerks his head again, as though inviting Harry to approach. Harry grimaces; this is his least favorite part of his job, and even worse, the noises indicate that whoever’s behind the tapestry is too distracted to have noticed their footsteps. If he has to find two students snogging and send them back to bed, he’d at least prefer that they not be actively kissing anymore when he comes upon them.

Harry shakes his head, and Draco rolls his eyes at Harry’s reluctance. The silent conversation ends when Draco takes three sharp steps forward, heels clapping on the stone floor, and rips the tapestry back.

The students inside break apart in shock; it’s two seventh year girls, a Gryffindor whom Harry doesn’t know and a Ravenclaw named Samantha who’s in his N.E.W.T.-level Care of Magical Creatures class. Both girls are bright red, and Harry winces with embarrassment; he’s already dreading facing Samantha on Tuesday morning, and his is definitely the better side of the situation.

“Professor Malfoy!” the Gryffindor blurts, then goes, if possible, even redder.

“Miss Miller, Miss Khanna.” Draco lifts his wrist elegantly, checking his watch and then raising his gaze to meet their eyes. “May I ask what you are doing out of your dorms? It is past your curfew.”

The girls share a horrified look at the prospect of answering that question, and Harry feels a pang of sympathy—who knows if they’re even out, and now they’re being asked to explain themselves to a professor—and steps forward, hovering at Draco’s shoulder.

“I think what Professor Malfoy means,” he says, “is that it’s past your curfew, and as you know from Professor McGonagall’s announcement, we’re keeping a stricter eye on these things until the issues with the wards are resolved. So why don’t we say it’s ten points each from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, and you both go back to your dorms now?”

The Gryffindor girl opens her mouth as if to say something, but Samantha drags her bodily away from the wall, talking over her as they go. “Yes, of course! Sorry Professor Malfoy, Professor Potter.” They make as if to go in the same direction, and are stopped by Draco clearing his throat pointedly.

“Go back to your _separate_ dorms, Miss Miller, Miss Khanna,” he says, and the girls nod and split up, hurrying off in opposite directions.

Harry and Draco stay in the corridor for a few minutes to make sure they don’t try and double back, and as they walk away, Draco sighs. “Oh, to be young and horny.”

Harry stifles a snort. “Can’t say I relate to that Hogwarts experience,” he muses, and Draco hums in response. “Anyway, it’s a bit silly, isn’t it? Cracking down extra hard on the straight couples makes sense, but those two aren’t going to be affected by the contraceptive wards one way or the other.”

Draco shrugs. “We can’t enforce the rules for only some of the students and not the others,” he says. “They’d throw a fit, imagine. And some of them are already stuck up enough. Merlin knows we don’t need to give them a real reason to think they’re oppressed for being straight.”

“True,” Harry says. One of McGonagall’s initiatives as Headmistress has been increased sexual education for all Hogwarts students. For most of them it’s gone over quite well, but there have been a few—unfortunately notable—outliers.

As they walk down the grand staircase, Harry continues to think out loud. “It seems a bit silly for us to be doing extra rounds when we can’t control what the students are doing inside their dorms,” he says. “Wouldn’t there be more danger of students getting into trouble in their own bedrooms?”

“I asked the Headmistress about that,” Draco says. “She’s placed spells on all the dorms for the time being that keep any students from being able to enter a bedroom besides their own. Boys are never able to get into the girls’ rooms, but this way girls can’t enter the boys’ rooms either, nor can students who reside in the second year room enter the fourth year room, and so on.”

Harry frowns. “That seems like overkill,” he says.

“I believe it’s the only way they could keep the spells localized,” Draco replies. “You ought to ask Granger about it. I think she’s the one who set it up.”

The dungeons are abandoned, and even more eerily quiet than the upper floors. There are sconces on the wall every six feet or so, but the light from the torches they hold doesn’t travel far, leaving sections of the floor bathed in shadow.

Draco Conjures a light to hover above them, pale lilac and brilliantly bright. “I don’t miss living down here,” he says with a shiver.

Harry raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Really?”

“The Slytherin dorms are nice enough,” Draco says with a shrug. “The view into the lake is always interesting, and the rooms were well appointed and kept warm in the winter. But the walk downstairs at the end of a night of studying?” He shakes his head.

“I would have thought you liked that sort of thing,” Harry says. “Stone walls and drafty windows. Archways and ancient columns.” He’s teasing, and fears he might have overstepped a boundary, but Draco actually laughs—quietly, but he does.

“Not particularly, if I’m being honest. There are many traditional things I adore, don’t get me wrong, but wizardkind’s insistence on clinging to architectural relics is not one of them.” He raises one eyebrow, dragging his fingertips along the wall. “For example, since the 1400s, we’ve discovered better building materials than stone.”

“Blasphemy,” Harry gasps, and Draco laughs again, even louder.

****

**Tuesday**

Draco shifts, attempting to resettle himself again in the small wooden chair, the only furniture he’s been given. He’s set up in an unused classroom; the set-up is strange, and part of him wants to go to the library and find out what this room was originally used for. There are long benches along three of the walls, with dusty stools pushed underneath, and three built-in circular tables lined up in the middle of the room. Draco’s claimed two of them; one as a make-shift examination space, equipped with basic veterinary restraint spells—the only ones he knows—and the other where he’s spread out his lesson plans and grading.

When Professor McGonagall had assigned running the walk-in student veterinary clinic to him, he’d had many questions—mainly, why wasn’t this Harry’s assignment, since he actually taught a veterinary class?—and was informed that it conflicted with Harry’s commitment to the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and if there were any pets with serious problems, he would arrange another time to see those students. As far as Draco is concerned, sod the Gryffindor Quidditch team, although he supposes his solo assignment is slightly better than Harry’s: the extermination of horny pixies.

At first, Draco had been upset that so many of their new duties had to be performed together rather than separately, although he secretly suspected that was part of Professor McGonagall’s plan, a way to punish them further for the inconvenience they had caused her. Their first shared patrol on Thursday had been painfully awkward, but Sunday had been fine—even nice, Draco can reluctantly admit. They worked well together when they found that couple, had even kept up a mostly pleasant stream of conversation, and the only time it had gotten awkward was when they reached the Astronomy Tower.

At least all Draco has to do today is cast a Pregnancy Diagnostic Charm on any pets who are brought to him, and advise students to keep a closer eye on their animals until the contraceptive wards are restored. He was expecting a rather more busy afternoon, but so far not one student has entered the classroom. Perhaps none of their pets are exhibiting signs of pregnancy yet.

Or perhaps the students simply don’t care.

Draco sighs, pulling a fresh essay to the top of his stack. His third years are in the middle of a unit on humanoid or part human Dark creatures, and he let them pick between werewolves, vampires, and hags for their essay topic; so far only two students had picked the latter, and if Draco has to read another poorly written treatise on the weaknesses of werewolves, he’s going to scream.

It’s mindless work—mention of Wolfsbane, check; explanation of how lycanthropy is passed on, check; _werewolves are only harmed by pure silver, not any other pure metals,_ minus two points—so he’s grateful when he’s distracted by a hesitant knock on the door.

Two Hufflepuff boys hover in the doorway, second years, if Draco’s not mistaken. One of them, the shorter one, is holding a large metal bowl, and the other is watching its contents nervously.

 _Oh no,_ Draco thinks, but he pastes a smile on his face. “Come in, come in,” he says, standing and gesturing to the other table. “You’re here for the veterinary clinic?”

The one holding the bowl nods. “Yes, Professor Malfoy.” 

“Our toads have been like this since before breakfast,” the other boy says. “One of our Prefects told us if they were still like this after we finished classes, we should bring them to you.”

The shorter boy—Patrick? Peter? Draco would remember it if he could consult his class list—pushes the bowl onto the table, and Draco pulls it closer to himself. There’s a pool of water in the bottom, and inside it are two frogs, one on top of the other and clutching it around its middle.

Draco frowns. “Why was there a bowl of water in your dorm room?”

“It had ice in it last night,” the taller boy explains.

“We were doing an experiment,” the other adds.

Draco decides not to ask what the experiment was—being no longer a twelve-year-old boy, he finds their antics sometimes frightening. “Ah,” he says instead, and taps his wand on the edge of the bowl, turning it transparent. As he expected, there’s a trail of eggs in the water below the bottom toad, and he sighs.

“These are your toads?” he confirms. The boys nod. “And one is male and one is female, yes?”

“Mine’s a boy,” the shorter one says.

“Mine is too!”

“Well, one of you is mistaken,” Draco says dryly, “because they’re mating. It was good for you to bring them to me. See, the larger one on the bottom here is the female.” He points, making sure not to disturb the toads, and the boys lean in closer to see. “She lays eggs in the water, and then the male climbs on top of her and fertilizes them. Frogs and toads only lay eggs in the water, so she must have been inspired to when she found this bowl of water.”

Draco grabs the list of spells he prepared for the clinic, scanning it for the one he wants. “The position is called amplexus, and they can stay in it for hours, but since they’ve been in it since this morning and mating has occurred, it should be safe to separate them.” He mouths the unfamiliar incantation once, then casts it, and carefully Levitates the male toad off of the female and onto the table.

“The eggs will die if they’re left in this water, so I’m going to bring them down to the lake,” he explains, siphoning the water into a jar with his wand. “In the meantime, keep an eye on these two and make sure you don’t leave any more standing water out in your dorm, alright?”

“Yes, Professor Malfoy,” the boys chorus before they leave, taking their pets and the now-empty bowl with them.

In another ten minutes, the hours for the clinic are done, and Draco packs up his things. He’s worried about the viability of any eggs that were hatched into melted ice, but all he can do is release them into the lake, as they definitely won’t have a chance of survival in the Hufflepuff dorms.

He makes his way down to the lake slowly, enjoying the fresh autumn air and admiring the way the leaves on the trees are beginning to change. Perhaps it’s only fitting of his position as an academic that he finds the autumn invigorating; the start of a new year holds a different sort of promise for Draco than the first day of January.

At least some of the students must feel the same, because they are scattered across the green, and he smiles to see them, clusters of black robes and bent heads. He releases the toad eggs into the water, explaining what he’s doing to a few sixth year students who catch up to him on the rocky beach, and then turns around to return to the castle. Somewhere among all of his responsibilities, new and old, he must find time to enjoy the outdoors more, before it turns cold again and they’re all stuck inside for months.

To the side of the castle entrance, he sees a familiar flash of turquoise-blue in the corner of his eye, and makes a detour to find Mephistopheles sunning himself in the grass. Curled up beside him is Tibby, which isn’t wholly unusual, but also is not completely normal—something strikes Draco as off about the way they are lying together, heads touching, one of Mephistopheles’s paws extended in Tabitha’s direction. The two are friends and can often be found roaming the castle together, but both are loyal to their owners; Mephistopheles usually spends much of his time in Draco’s room, but now that Draco is thinking about it, he’s not sure Mephistopheles came home at all last night. And he’s never seen the two resting together; Quandums are generally solitary and private, although they form small family units with their young. As he approaches, Mephistopheles notices him and gets to his feet, stretching once before trotting over to Draco. He reaches down a hand to greet him, expecting Mephistopheles will now follow him into the castle, but to his surprise, after circling Draco’s legs twice and yipping in acknowledgment, Mephistopheles returns to Tibby.

This time, he lies down in front of her, curled up against her belly where she is sprawled with legs extended. And Tibby lets him.

Draco frowns. That’s not normal Quandum behavior. He remembers how they’d acted Sunday night, prancing about while he and Harry did rounds, and his stomach sinks. He reaches into his bag, finds the list of spells he’d made, and scans it for the one he wants. When he comes closer, crouching in front of the two Quandums, they both watch him carefully, twin orange gazes staring at him, unblinking.

He makes some comforting noises as he pulls out his wand, pointing it towards Tibby as he reads the spell. Immediately there’s a swirl of green above her stomach, indicating a positive result.

Fuck. She’s pregnant.


	2. Week Two

****

**Wednesday**

Harry is sitting at the staff table, sipping his coffee and debating whether he wants porridge or toast with his breakfast, when Draco slams into the seat beside him. There’s no other word for it. He yanks out the chair, uncaring of how the legs squeak against the stone floor, and then drops into it heavily. Students and teachers alike turn to look at them, but Draco doesn’t notice.

“Your Quandum is pregnant,” he spits. 

Harry sets down his coffee cup. “What?”

“Tabitha. She’s pregnant,” Draco says. “I did a spell yesterday that confirmed it. She and Mephistopheles were, for lack of a better word, _cuddling,_ and I had a feeling.”

“Well,” Harry says. He spins his coffee cup around once, making the liquid inside splash against the walls.

“Well?” Draco splutters. “You don’t have anything to say besides _well?_ ”

The other professors are sending them sidelong glances. Harry angles his body towards Draco, trying to keep their conversation as quiet as possible. “I don’t think this is something to be concerned about.”

“My pet has gone and impregnated your pet, and you don’t think this is something to be concerned about?” From Draco’s tone, he obviously thinks it is. “As a responsible pet owner, shouldn’t you have done something to—to keep this from happening?

Although normally he’s able to shrug off Draco’s dramatic moments, even find them amusing, Harry didn’t sleep wonderfully the night before, and his temper is short. “Shouldn’t I be mad at _you_ for not keeping better control over Mephisto?” he says. “Besides, how was I supposed to know this would be an issue? It never has been before!”

“Because the contraceptive wards were up!” Draco hisses. “The contraceptive wards you didn’t even _know_ were up, and therefore couldn’t have known would be keeping your pet from getting pregnant!”

“Gentlemen!” McGonagall drops her hands onto their shoulders, squeezing hard. Harry winces, glancing up at her expression—severe and displeased. “Perhaps you’d like to continue this argument out of earshot of the students?”

Harry looks down, face going hot. “Sorry, Professor.”

“My apologies.” Draco, at least, looks equally chagrined.

McGonagall frowns. “Very well. I have a task for you both this afternoon,” she says. “Some of the owls have begun laying eggs, and refuse to leave their nests unattended to deliver the post. I’ve had several worried parents contact me because they haven’t gotten replies to letters, as well as complaints from students that their mail is not going out. You will be watching the nests in the Owlery so that the owls feel comfortable leaving their nests.”

Harry looks up at her, confused. “But Professor, the pixies—”

She waves her hand. “This is more important. The pixies can wait until later in the week. I trust you’ll both be available?”

“Of course, Minerva.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Very well.” She claps their shoulders, and Draco startles. “Enjoy the rest of your breakfast.”

As McGonagall leaves, Draco glowers, and Harry does his best to ignore him. Porridge, he decides. He’s in the mood for porridge this morning after all.

***

The only thing worse than several hours alone with Harry in the Owlery, Draco decides immediately upon arrival, is spending time alone with Harry _and_ Granger. Still in the Owlery, of course, because Draco’s done something terrible in a previous life that he must be punished for.

(Oh, who is he kidding. Draco’s done enough terrible things in _this_ life to deserve this punishment twice-over.)

When he arrives in the tower just after one, he finds Harry and Granger sat on small three-legged stools among the hay and feathers, looking very undignified for a Hogwars professor and a Ministry expert.

“…quite ingenious,” Granger is saying. “Owls usually take over other birds’ nests rather than building their own, so they’ve designed structures to mimic that in the Owlery in order to encourage the birds not to nest elsewhere. Imagine if they were laying eggs in the Forbidden Forest…”

Draco lets the door drop shut behind him, enjoying (and then right away feeling guilty for enjoying) the way it makes them jump.

“Malfoy.” Harry greets him with a nod.

“Oh, hello,” Granger says, granting him a tight smile.

“Hermione was just explaining that the Owlery was designed so the birds will choose to nest here rather than farther from the castle,” Harry says. “Fascinating stuff. Don’t you have any more to say about it, Hermione?”

“Mostly I was keeping you company until Malfoy arrived,” Hermione says, standing and brushing straw off her trousers. “And he’s here now, so I should probably get back to the lab.”

“Lab?” Draco asks, curious despite himself.

“Oh, that’s just my little joke,” Hermione says. “Professor McGonagall has let me set up in one of the empty classrooms—there really wasn’t room for all my notes in my suite.” She shrugs. “It’s not anything special, really, just a convenience for me. Anyway, Harry, I’ll see you later. Bye, Malfoy.”

She’s out the door before Harry can even get up to say goodbye, and then they’re alone, just the shuffles and hoots of the few owls that stayed behind and the wind whistling outside to keep them company. Suddenly Draco wonders if it’s worse to be alone with Harry than have Granger here, after all.

Harry kicks the stool Granger was sitting on a few feet in Draco’s direction, and he sits down, wrapping his arms around himself. Even though the weather is still mild, it’s cold in here from the combination of altitude and lack of insulation. He feels a bit better after casting a Warming Charm on himself, but knows it won’t last.

“Seems silly that both of us have to be here,” Harry says. “We could at least take it in turns, or something.”

Part of Draco bristles at the implication that Harry doesn’t want to spend time with him, even though he agrees with the sentiment (and the feeling is mutual).

“I think she’s doing some of this to punish us,” Draco mutters. Harry scoffs. “What? You disagree?”

Harry shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Just thinking about how my alternative to this was dealing with a pixie infestation.” He smiles wryly. “So you may be right.”

“Hmm.” Draco shifts on his stool, a vain attempt to get more comfortable. “Do you know if Granger’s making any progress on the wards, anyway?”

“It didn’t come up.” Harry shrugs, and Draco resists the urge to roll his eyes. “You could ask her yourself, you know. I’m sure she’d enjoy talking about it with someone who understands the magical theory more than I do.”

It’s Draco’s turn to shrug now. He finds the topic interesting, but doubts that Granger wants to discuss it with him.

Harry’s eyes on him are intense, distracting, and Draco half-turns away, trying to ignore his gaze. It’s not intentional on Harry’s part, he doesn’t think—it’s how he is, an intensity about him that is natural and innate. It draws Draco in, he can’t help it—those few months when he was inside Harry’s walls are still a bright spot in his memory, even several years later.

“I am sorry about Tibby, you know,” Harry says suddenly, startling Draco out of his reverie.

“What?”

Harry raises an eyebrow. “The fact that she’s pregnant? You seemed pretty upset about it earlier.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I tracked her down earlier and performed some diagnostic spells. She’s only a few days along, so she’ll be giving birth in about two weeks.”

Draco frowns, turning to look at Harry. “That soon?”

“Quandums are marsupials, so the joey will stay in her pouch for several months after that. And they only raise young one at a time, so at least we don’t have to worry about a whole litter running around the castle.” He laughs nervously.

“Yes, small mercies,” Draco says, rolling his eyes.

“Obviously I didn’t intend for this to happen,” Harry says. “I mean, you’re right, I should have had her on contraceptive potions already—I didn’t know about the wards, and she spends so much time with Mephisto; I wasn’t thinking—”

“Are you ever?” Draco asks, because he’s feeling contrary, and his arse hurts from the stool, and it’s cold in the Owlery.

Harry’s face falls. “Quandums generally stay together as family units until the joey is at least a year old, but by the end of the school year, Tibby and Mephisto should be alright being separated for the summer,” he says. “I know you don’t want another thing tying us together.”

“Because there’s so much tying us together already?”

Harry flushes. “You know what I meant—”

“Merlin forbid I remind you that at one point we used to be together,” Draco snaps, and he never brings this up so he doesn’t know why he’s doing it now, except the words are in his mouth and on his lips and Harry’s just staring at him, slack-jawed, as he goes. “You’ve made it very clear that you’d like to forget all about that.”

“Made it clear—how have I made it clear?” Harry asks. “I didn’t want to stop being—you know—I wasn’t trying to _break up_ with you or something. I never said that!”

“You didn’t have to say it, the way you stopped responding to my letters said plenty on its own!” Draco says, pushing himself to his feet.

“I wasn’t trying to ignore you, but you know what it’s like to be a teacher here, Malfoy—”

Anger is crackling under Draco’s skin, and he wants to yell, wants to call Harry’s bluff on all the excuses he made over the years, but he’s distantly aware that his behavior so far today has been horrible, and it would be better if he removed himself from the situation before it gets any worse.

“I have to go,” he blurts, and turns on his heel to leave, ignoring whatever Harry yells after him.

****

**Thursday**

Hermione enters his rooms without knocking.

She’s the only one in the castle who can do that, so Harry merely rolls his head to the side, unalarmed, and sees her standing inside the closed door, arms crossed. Tibby, who is sleeping on his stomach, jumps up at the disturbance, and then, seeing it’s Hermione, settles back down again. Quandums are good judges of character, and Tibby knows that Hermione is one of Harry’s friends.

“McGonagall sent me to see why you aren’t at dinner,” Hermione says.

Harry fakes a cough. “I’m sick.” Tibby, disgruntled with his movement, hops off of his stomach and takes up residence on the armchair instead.

Hermione raises an eyebrow. “You seem fine.”

“I’m terribly ill. So weak. I couldn’t possibly leave this sofa and go to dinner, or do evening rounds with Malfoy.”

“So that’s what this is about.” Hermione pushes Harry’s feet off the sofa, and he reluctantly sits up as she drops onto the other end, positioning herself facing him with her legs crossed. “You’re trying to avoid Malfoy?” When Harry nods in confirmation, she curls her arms around her knees. “Why now? It didn’t seem like your fight at breakfast yesterday was so bad, from what I heard.”

“It wasn’t,” Harry admits. “But we got into it again after you left the Owlery.”

Hermione’s eyes widen. “About Tibby again?”

“No. Not entirely.” Harry scrubs a hand across his face. “It’s complicated.”

“You know, you never really talk about him,” Hermione says. “When he came to work here, I figured you’d be at each other’s throats, complaining about him constantly. And when you rarely brought him up, and I figured you must be getting on better, have come to some kind of truce.” She tilts her head to the side. “But you haven’t.”

“It’s complicated, ‘Mione.”

“You already said that.”

Harry huffs out a frustrated breath. “Well, it’s true.”

“Try me.”

He shakes his head. “There’s a lot to the story you don’t know.”

She looks surprised. “There’s a story? I thought it was that you didn’t like each other in school, and you still don’t like each other now.”

“No.” Harry rubs his fingers over his knees, plucking at the stiff denim. “We were…friends, for a bit.”

“Friends.” Hermione’s voice is flat, like she doesn’t believe him.

“Yeah, after we graduated from our degree programs. You and Ron were on your honeymoon, remember, and Luna had just started hosting those big dinner parties. She invited Malfoy to a few of them, and we got to talking. Fighting, really, at first. Hashing through everything from before. But once that was done, we realized that we actually had other things to talk about, and it was…nice.”

That was true, in a way. Really, the fights had turned into sex, pushing each other up against walls and tearing clothes off with abandon. The talking had only come after. But Harry doesn’t want Hermione to know about all of that.

He can’t read Hermione’s expression, or her voice once she speaks. “You’ve never told Ron or I about this.”

“I didn’t know how to explain it,” Harry says. He’d only recently come out to them, and was just becoming more comfortable with his own sexuality; he didn’t think that telling them about the casual sex he was having with Draco Malfoy would be anything except awkward.

Hermione reaches out and grabs his hand, stilling it where he’s been worrying his jeans. He hadn’t noticed he was doing it. She squeezes, and waits for Harry to meet her eyes. “We trust you, Harry. If you think someone’s worth your time, I trust you.”

He turns his palm upward, squeezing her hand back before pulling away. “Thank you.”

“But then what happened?” she asks. “You aren’t friends anymore.”

“I got this job,” Harry says. “Moved away. It’s hard to keep in touch; you know how it is.”

“I would have thought that when he started teaching here, you would have picked up where you left off, then.”

Harry shrugs. It’s more complicated than that, but he doesn’t know how to explain it to Hermione. He doesn’t really want to, anyway. The seriousness and intimacy that had come to characterize their interactions by the time Harry left had only been possible when preceeded by sex—with sex off the table, once Harry left London, he didn’t know how to maintain that closeness through letters. And though he’d been hopeful they might rekindle something when Draco came to Hogwarts, that hope had quickly been squashed by Draco’s coldness upon arrival.

Harry wonders sometimes what would have happened if he’d talked to Draco about it sooner. There had been many times when the line between casual sex and a relationship seemed unclear, when what they were doing fell more on the side of something serious, life-changing. When they lay together in bed, sharing whispered thoughts and dreams. Moments when Harry had wanted to take Draco’s hand, and ask him to take a chance on him, on _them._ To ask him on a real date, outside of the safe bounds of their apartments. But he’d never worked up the courage to do it. And neither had Draco.

It wasn’t that he’d been trying to ignore Draco’s letters, the first few weeks when he was settling into life as a professor, but writing had never been Harry’s most natural way of expressing himself. He didn’t know how to recreate the intensity and openness of their conversations when Draco wasn’t sitting a few feet away from him, watching him with careful gray eyes. He couldn’t be as vulnerable on parchment as he could in person, especially when the nature of their relationship felt so murky. It was easier to pretend they were better off apart, until Draco was at Hogwarts too, and Harry realized how wrong he’d been the whole time—and by then it was too late, and he’d well and truly fucked it up, as Draco made very obvious.

There’s no way that Harry feels comfortable explaining all of that to Hermione.

“We didn’t,” he says instead. Simple. Succinct.

“Does any of this have to do with how the two of you caused the wards to fall?”

Harry groans, and Tibby hops down from the armchair, looking even more annoyed. “Hermione.”

“It’s a valid question,” she says. Tibby jumps onto the edge of the sofa, pawing at Hermione’s shoulder. She startles, clutching her chest. “Tibby!” She glares at Harry. “You need to put a bell on her.”

He shrugs. It looks like Hermione wants to say more, and Harry steels himself for an interrogation, but it doesn’t come.

“You know,” Hermione says, “you still have to go do rounds with Malfoy.”

“ _Hermione._ ” Harry lets his head fall and thump against the back of the sofa.

“Would you rather McGonagall come knocking on your door instead of me?” Hermione asks. Harry reluctantly shakes his head. “Come on then, get up. It’s not going to kill you to walk around the castle with him for a few hours, is it?”

“It might,” Harry grouses.

“You’re ridiculous,” Hermione says, standing up. “And I have a Floo call scheduled with Ron, so you’re on your own if McGonagall decides to come after you.”

When Hermione leaves, Harry is still lying on the sofa, debating if it’s worth it to go.

“What do you think, Tibs?” he asks her.

But she’s gone into the bedroom, and doesn’t hear him.

****

**Saturday**

Draco skips his Saturday morning potions making appointment with Horace and Harry with absolutely no guilt.

In fact, he leaves the Hogwarts grounds entirely—not because he’s afraid of Professor McGonagall’s reaction (well, he’s not _that_ afraid), but because he needs some time away. A breath of fresh air. Air that doesn’t smell like Harry Potter’s cologne.

He dashes off a quick letter, sending it with one of the male school owls just to be safe, and trudges across the dewy grounds and down to the front gate of Hogwarts so that he can Apparate to Diagon. When he enters Millie’s shop, she’s standing at the counter reading his note, and she looks up with a wry smile when the bell over the shop door rings.

“At least your owl arrived before you did,” she says dryly.

“I’m sorry, Mills,” Draco says, catching the door so it doesn’t slam shut behind him. “I needed to get away.”

“You’re aware I can’t close the shop on this short notice,” Millie says, and the unspoken implication that she would have done it if he’d asked her to ahead of time, even though Saturdays are her busiest day of the week, warms his heart.

“I can occupy myself in the corner,” Draco promises. “Wait for you to take your lunch.”

“I can take a long lunch,” Millie says, squeezing his shoulder. She nods towards the table on the far wall, where she has an assortment of ink pens and artist’s pencils spread out next to several notebooks full of thick, cream-colored paper. It had been a necessity when she first opened her business, to convince wizards that they might like using Muggle writing utensils after all; she’s more established now, with a set customer base, but it’s still a popular attraction for anyone who enters the store. “I got in some new colors of that ballpoint you like.”

Draco smiles, squeezing her hand back in gratitude, and then drifts over to the display table while she finishes setting up the store. When customers begin to enter, and he realizes he’s in the way, he moves to one of the overstuffed armchairs in the corner behind the register. Millie doesn’t mind if he sits there and reads while customers mill about; there’s enough to look at in her store, something for everyone, that people don’t usually need to sit and wait for a spouse or friend to finish browsing. Millie’s is the first Muggle and wizarding stationary shop in London; she’s got a wall of quills as well as a beautiful display of handcrafted wooden pens; rolls of parchment in every shade and bound notebooks with embossed leather covers. Just entering the store makes Draco take a breath of relief, and he’s not the only one; many customers circle the store more than once, just to take it all in, before they make their purchase. Through it all Millie is there answering questions, making recommendations, and bagging purchases; around eleven, her assistant arrives, and Millie makes her way to Draco.

He puts down the copy of _Modern Defense_ he’s been reading and looks up at her. “I can wait a bit longer if you need to finish up.”

“Clarissa will be fine,” Millie says. “Where do you want to eat?”

They leave Diagon through the Leaky and end up in a little Italian restaurant a few streets over, a narrow space that is easy to ignore when you pass it by on the street. When Millie first brought Draco here a few years ago, he’d looked with skepticism at the plastic-coated tablecloths, the laminated menus, the vases of fake roses at the center of every table. But the food is good, the music quiet, and the staff not overly attentive, which makes it an ideal location for the long, rambling personal conversations that Draco and Millie are sometimes prone to. It’s no mistake that she’s lead them here today, after Draco showed up practically unannounced this morning.

Millie, to her credit, does not immediately launch an interrogation. She asks Draco what appetizer he would like to split, and orders a lemonade when their waiter stops by the table.

“Business doing well?” Draco asks, fingering the edge of his menu where the laminate is beginning to peel.

Millie nods. “We’re in a bit of a lull now, since the back-to-school rush is over, but it’s steady. And we’ll be starting promotions for the holidays soon, that always causes things to pick up.”

Draco presses a hand to his forehead. “Stop, don’t remind me.” Millie laughs. “That’s not coming up that soon, though.”

“Well, no, but you know retail—start advertising early.” She shrugs, resigned. Millie has a lot of thoughts about what shopkeepers are expected to do to keep up with the Joneses, but she also knows she has to play along in order to keep her business viable, and is good at doing that.

“Mmm.” Draco hums in agreement. The waiter swoops in with Millie’s lemonade, and then takes their lunch orders. Only after he’s taken their menus and disappeared through the ratty curtain leading to the back of the restaurant does Millie fold her hands together on the table and lean in.

“Draco. You know I have to ask.”

“Do you?” Draco asks, leaning back in his own chair and crossing his arms.

Millie frowns. “Yes, you fool. We’ve been friends for a long time, but that doesn’t exempt you from the responsibility of explaining your weird behavior.”

Draco huffs out a laugh, shaking his head. “I told you, Millie. I needed to get away.”

She raises one eyebrow. “Away from what?”

“You know what.” Draco glares. Millie smiles, placid, and waits. “Away from Potter.”

“There it is.”

“If you knew, then why’d you make me say it?” Draco sighs. “Minerva asked us to do all these things together, until the contraceptive wards are back up. On Wednesday we were supposed to be watching the owl nests in the Owlery, and instead we got into a fight about how Mephistopheles impregnated Tabitha. Then on Thursday Potter skived off of rounds with me, and we were meant to be potion-making with Slughorn this morning, but I didn’t want to see his stupid face. So here I am.”

Millie frowns, resting one elbow on the table and propping her chin on her hand. Draco adores how utterly she has eschewed the proper training of their childhood, and how very herself she seems when doing it. “So this was revenge.”

“I wouldn’t go _that_ far,” Draco says. “That makes it sound premeditated.”

“…as opposed to spur-of-the-moment and fear based?” Millie asks, grinning obnoxiously.

“Shut up.”

“So it’s true, then. You’re afraid of Potter.”

“Well that’s nothing new, is it, so I don’t know why you need to dwell on it.”

“Draco.” Millie abruptly drops her arm and leans in, expression melting into one of concern. “I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll keep saying it, but I think you need to talk to him.”

“I talk to him all the time,” Draco counters. “We work together.”

“You know that’s not what I mean. Talk about your feelings, about what happened when he left to work at Hogwarts.”

“That’s in the past.”

“Clearly not, if you’re still upset by it,” Millie says.

“I don’t see what good would come of bringing it up.” It’s an argument they’ve had before, but Millie, bless her, doesn’t point that out. Instead she falls into the same well-worn pattern.

“You can get things off your chest and not be so stressed around him anymore,” Millie says. “And that’s only the worst case scenario. Best case—”

“Stop.” Draco raises a hand to interrupt her. “I really—I can’t talk about that right now, Mills.”

“Alright.” She relents easily, shifting back in her chair and drumming her fingers on the edge of the table. Another day she might be inclined to argue with him, but Draco expects his unusual behavior is getting him a pass, although there will surely be another interrogation later on. “Why are all of your additional duties with Potter, anyway?”

Draco fidgets with his napkin. “Well, I think she may be punishing us.”

“Punishing you?” Millie raises her eyebrows. “Punishing you for what?”

“…for knocking down the contraceptive wards?”

“Wait. Draco. You didn’t tell me _that._ ” Millie shakes her head. “How on earth did you two manage to—”

“Another lemonade, madam?” The waiter appears at their table and Millie lets him swap out her drink, thanking him before he goes.

When he leaves, she sighs, crossing her arms. “What’s that you said about Mephistopheles impregnating someone?”

Safer ground. Draco breathes deep with relief, and launches into the story.

****

**Monday**

Harry is eating toast at his desk and rushing through his lesson plan for the day, desperately trying to remember why beginning-of-the-year Harry thought it would be a good idea to take a double class of third years into the Forbidden Forest at eight-thirty in the morning, when there’s a knock on his classroom door.

It echoes loud in the empty room, and Harry looks up, surprised. The Care of Magical Creatures classroom is a new addition to the Hogwarts landscape, and in all honesty, it’s more of a shed than a classroom—a large structure, wooden, with desks that can be pushed against the wall and a cabinet of tools at the front next to Harry’s desk. He requested it be built in order to integrate more lecture-style and group work-based lessons into the curriculum, which for many years had been completely practical, as well as to have a space to retreat to on days when the weather made it too miserable to stand outside. Harry found the students were better able to handle and enjoy their in-person time with the magical creatures—especially the more intimidating ones like hippogriffs—if they had learned a bit about the animals _before_ he brought them out. And no one could focus when they were soaked from head to toe.

But his classroom is apart from all the others, so Harry rarely gets visitors, and it’s not yet time for his first students to arrive. “Come in,” he calls out, confused—perhaps one of his students has come early with a question?—and then Draco slinks inside, looking sheepish, and Harry’s heart turns over in his chest.

They haven’t spoken since their fight last Wednesday. In fact, they’ve been avoiding each other, so Harry feels slightly sick to his stomach being face-to-face with Draco now—he wants to make things better, but is afraid that whatever comes out of his mouth will do the opposite. They’ve always been good at riling each other up, after all.

“Good morning,” Draco says. Harry is still too stunned to respond, watching with his mouth agape as Draco approaches his desk and sets a familiar package in front of him.

Harry looks down at the Chocolate Frog, then up at Draco. “What’s this?”

“Sheer bribery,” Draco says, and Harry can’t help but crack a smile at his tone of voice. “I’m here to call a truce. We can’t spend the rest of…however long it will be until the wards are fixed avoiding each other. The Headmistress will surely notice, and neither of us want that.”

Harry snorts, nodding in agreement. “Definitely not.”

“Exactly.” Draco inclines his head. “So, a truce. We both show up to all of our assigned duties with a smile on our faces until this is over.”

Harry can’t help interrupting. “And then we go back to never speaking again?” he asks, voice sharp. Bribe or no bribe, he won’t forget so easily that Draco left him to spend several hours alone with Slughorn.

Draco’s mouth turns down into a frown, but it looks like it’s one of—disappointment? “We used to talk,” he responds, voice equally prickly. “And may I remind you that _you_ are the one who started this immature charade of skipping out on professorial responsibilities.”

The implied insult to his teaching stings, and Harry finds himself on his feet. “That didn’t stop you from doing the same thing Saturday _and_ last night, though, did it?”

Draco flushes, and Harry feels a vindictive rush of satisfaction. He’d arrived at their designated meeting spot the previous night ready to let bygones be bygones and forget their momentary immaturity—maybe Draco really _had_ had an urgent family matter come up, like his hastily-written owl had claimed—but day two of Draco’s disappearing act had put him in a foul mood.

“I didn’t come here to fight with you,” Draco says, voice strained. “Can we just—put it behind us and say we’ll do better?”

He puts out his hand, inviting Harry to shake on it, and Harry abruptly flashes back to saying goodbye before he left for his first year of teaching. Harry’d gone in for a kiss and a hug, but Draco had intercepted him, sticking his hand out with such force that he jabbed Harry in the stomach. They’d ended up in a weird half-hug while holding hands, not the full-body embrace Harry had been envisioning. Years later, he still regrets it.

It must be the imagined embrace that clouds his mind, because he hasn’t planned on saying what comes out of his mouth next.

“Do you want to _actually_ try and do better?”

“What?” Draco drops his arm, clearly confused.

“You said it yourself. We used to get along well. Wouldn’t it be better for the time being, and for our professional careers, if we tried to get along again?”

Draco frowns, looking…concerned? “Harry, I’m not sure that’s the best idea given our current positions.”

Harry flushes as he realizes what Draco thought he was implying. “Not…like _that,_ ” he stutters. “I meant trying to be friends again. We were friends as well, weren’t we?”

It feels like it takes a long time for Draco to respond. It’s at least enough time for Harry’s heart to jump into his throat and begin beating twice as fast. Enough time for Harry to regret having said anything.

Finally, Draco speaks. “Yes, we were friends as well. So I suppose that makes sense,” he says. Then, with a little smile, “We are to be Quandum grandfathers together, after all.”

Harry laughs, shaking his head.

“On that note, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Draco continues. “Have you changed Tabitha’s diet at all to accommodate her pregnancy? I was reading, and according to Harper’s _Outback Magic,_ expectant Quandum mothers ought to double their potassium intake—”

“I think I’ve got it under control, Malfoy,” Harry says, rolling his eyes. “Or have you forgotten that I teach Care of Magical Creatures?”

Draco puts his hands on his hips, looking cross. “And your specialization is in _British_ magical creatures, is it not?” he asks. “I am merely advising you—”

“And I’m telling you that I know what I’m doing,” Harry huffs, crossing his arms. After a moment the irony of their positions hits him, and he has to laugh. “We’re doing a great job with this whole _getting along_ thing, now, aren’t we?”

Draco’s expression gets crosser, but Harry can tell it’s because he’s trying not to laugh. “I’ll send you the article,” he says, and makes his way towards the door. “Enjoy the Chocolate Frog!”

That afternoon, when Harry opens the Chocolate Frog package for an afternoon snack and finds a miniature portrait of himself staring back at him, he wonders if Draco planned it like this, or if it was just a very lucky coincidence.


	3. Week Three

****

**Thursday**

Draco has never been one to need a clingy pet, but he’s glad that Mephistopheles made his way back to Draco’s quarters after his usual midday frolick with Tibby. Draco’s nerves have been on edge since Monday, when Harry suggested they try being friends again, but their joint patrol tonight is the first time they’ll be spending enough time together to really put it to the test.

Instead, Draco has spent too much of the past few days reflecting on the time when he was friends—and more—with Harry. The rush of the first time they’d kissed, after a night out with friends that turned into an argument that turned into Harry pulling him close and begging Draco to come back to his apartment. The way it felt to have all of Harry’s energy focused on him as he knelt over Draco in bed—or when they sat on the floor at Draco’s coffee table after, talking about nothing while they ate stale pastries with their fingers, only to end up doing it again on the floor. The unexpected similarities they’d found between them, in those halting conversations where they first breached the uncomfortable topic of their pasts, ensconced in the safety of soft blankets and moonlight. How much Draco had wanted more, had wanted to put a name to what they were and take it out in public, and how hurt he’d been when Harry left for Scotland and the replies to Draco’s owls got further and farther between.

“I’m being horribly melancholy, aren’t I Mephisto?” Draco asks, scratching his chin. Mephistopheles has no useful response, but he puts his front paws on Draco’s leg, leaning into the touch, which at least makes Draco smile. “I should just be glad that we’ve agreed to stop arguing so much, shouldn’t I?” Mephistopheles yips. “Maybe I should take some tips from you,” Draco continues. “After all, you’ve gotten on well with Tabitha, haven’t you? Perhaps you have some suggestions on what might woo her owner?”

He leans down, as if to listen to what Mephistopheles has to say, and Mephisto head-butts his ear. Draco moves back to escape, shaking his head at himself. “Look what you’ve come to, Draco,” he mutters. “Asking your pet for dating advice. As though any advice would do any good.” Because in the end, he comes to the same conclusion as he had several years ago, when their communication had first fallen by the wayside: Harry isn’t going to want someone like Draco, not for something serious.

Draco isn’t being melancholy, he tells himself. It’s not that he puts his stock of himself in the hands of others—he knows that he’s improved from his vile teenaged self, and he’s well respected by his colleagues even if they aren’t close. The opinion of strangers who’ve never met him don’t carry weight against those facts.

But at the same time, he can’t help being realistic. Harry has never given any indication that he’s interested in Draco beyond their mutual physical attraction. There were times Draco thought his feelings were returned, but Harry’s never said or done anything to make it clear, and Draco doesn’t trust his own over-eager imagination. The only person Harry’s dated seriously is Ginny Weasley, who couldn’t be more different from Draco if she tried. It was Harry who let their correspondence, and by extension their relationship (whatever it was), fall by the wayside when he left London. All the facts _there_ point to the truth: that Harry does not return Draco’s romantic feelings.

“Why couldn’t I have fallen for someone average,” Draco moans, head rolling to face Mephistopheles. He’s watching Draco with his familiar, but still unsettling, orange gaze. “Not _average,_ ” Draco amends, thinking about it. “But, you know. Someone who might have a hope one day of liking me back. Not Harry bloody Potter, Saviour of Wizarding Britain.”

Mephistopheles stretches, curving his neck to the side in an arch, and then settles down to sleep, feet slightly extended to press against Draco’s leg.

“At least I have you, Mephisto,” Draco whispers, and they sit in silent companionship until Draco betrays his pet twenty minutes later by getting up.

“I’m sorry!” he calls, as Mephistopheles stalks into the bedroom, the arch of his spine and tail seeming to scream that he’s going where he can sleep _undisturbed._ “I wish I could stay here too,” Draco continues, now fully talking to himself, as he does up his robes and puts on his shoes. He would infinitely prefer to stay in his rooms rather than leave them and face Harry, but needs must. Steeling himself with a deep breath, Draco leaves his room and makes for the first floor landing. He immediately wishes he could turn around and retreat, but Harry has already heard him approach and turns to greet him, smiling. Harry’s wearing jeans and a jumper that Draco recognizes as being a creation of Molly Weasley’s, and seeing him like that, rather than in his professorial robes, brings back a strong wave of nostalgia. Draco could be twenty-two again, leaning into Harry’s side as they laughed at a show on the wireless, empty takeaway containers strewn across his coffee table. Affection bursting in his heart and beating in his blood, the desperate desire to reach out and _show_ Harry, the courage he never quite had enough of to follow through.

“Draco,” Harry says, taking a step away from the wall and towards Draco.

“Are we on a first name basis now?” Draco asks, crossing his arms and hoping his blush isn’t noticeable in the dim light.

Harry’s smile is bright. “I think it fits, for our renewed friendship, don’t you think?”

“Whatever you say, Potter,” Draco mutters, and is rewarded with Harry’s laugh.

“I should have known it would be too difficult for you,” he teases, and Draco relents, taking another step closer.

“I can give it a try, _Harry._ ” He’s aiming for a jeering tone, something sharp and sarcastic, but it comes out soft and Draco can’t stop it. When Harry knocks his shoulder into Draco’s, it catches him off guard, and he returns the movement on pure instinct. It makes Harry laugh again, and Draco feels silly, buoyant, like he might float away. He forces himself to tamp down that feeling and takes a step back, putting distance between himself and Harry.

“Start with the common rooms again?” he suggests, and Harry nods, catching up quickly when Draco takes off at a brisk pace. Draco ignores how easily they fall into step together. He’s not going to let himself get caught up in fantasies, not tonight.

****

**Saturday**

“Sorry to interrupt, Horace.” It’s strange to see McGonagall in more casual wear on the weekend—well, as casual as she gets, which means her now-grey hair in a severe plait instead of a severe bun, and she’s wearing less formal robes. Harry glances sidelong at Draco before returning his attention to McGonagall. He feels like a student, hoping the interruption means class will be canceled, but in Harry’s defense he’s never liked potion-making. In the half-hour they’ve been there, Draco has made neat piles of all his ingredients, and diced his salamander tail perfectly, while Harry has had to throw out his first attempt because he forgot a key ingredient (which elicited pitying looks from Slughorn and poorly disguised amusement from Draco).

As an adult, however, Harry knows his hopes are unfounded—McGonagall has probably just come to ask one of them something, he reasons, until she continues speaking. “I’m going to have to steal Harry and Draco away for the rest of the day.”

Harry looks up, startled. Draco seems equally surprised, and Harry looks to Horace for permission before he catches himself.

“Of course, of course,” Slughorn says jovially, and McGonagall waits for Harry and Draco to stand and join her in the corridor before closing the door.

“Do you mind if we walk and talk?” she asks, setting off at a brisk pace.

“No.” Harry hurries to keep up, Draco following after him.

“I was eating a late breakfast this morning in the Great Hall when one of the fourth-year students brought me this. She found it on the shore of the lake.” From the pocket of her robes, she produces what Harry at first thinks is a Remembrall. Leaning in to get a closer look, he sees that it is not smoothly transparent like glass, but slick and wet-looking; nor is it filled with white smoke—whatever is inside it looks more solid, just blurry, and is much darker in color.

“What _is_ that?” Draco asks.

McGonagall returns the item to her pocket, wiping her hand on her robes after doing so. “That,” she says, “is a squid egg. A squid egg that has somehow split free from the egg sack it belonged to.”

Harry swallows nervously. _That_ doesn’t sound good. From what he remembers about their unit on non-magical marine animals during university, little is known about squid reproduction except that some of their eggs are deposited in sacks, and others in strange tubes; one species even produces weird grape-like bunches. He doesn’t think that one individual egg should be that size, though.

“A squid egg?” Draco says. “But—”

“Is that from the giant squid?” Harry interrupts, blanching at the thought. Logically he knows it’s the only possibility, but he remembers from his classes that female squid can lay thousands of eggs at once, and his brain automatically shys away from where that train of thought leads.

McGonagall nods once, decisive and sharp. “Yes,” she says. “I’m sure you can understand why this is a concern.”

“Definitely,” Harry says.

Draco clears his throat, obviously annoyed. “Some of us didn’t study Muggle biology,” he says, irritated. “Can someone explain to me what the concern is?”

McGonagall glances back at Harry, but doesn’t say anything, so he assumes it’s up to him to explain. “Squid can lay thousands of eggs, but in the ocean the majority won’t live to be adults, they’ll be eaten by predators first. But giant squid have very few predators…”

“The only known predator of Muggle giant squid is the sperm whale,” McGonagall says crisply. “And due to its proximity to the magic of Hogwarts, the giant squid that lives in the Great Lake is at least three times the size of those the Muggles have recorded.”

“And there are no sperm whales living in the Great Lake,” Harry adds dryly.

“I guessed that much, thank you Potter,” Draco mutters. “How did the giant squid lay eggs, anyway? Isn’t the point that there’s only one?”

“It’s self-reproducing,” McGonagall says darkly.

“Even in the lake, the eggs will be vulnerable, and not all of them will reach adulthood,” Harry says to himself, mostly thinking aloud. “But the percentage that could…”

McGonagall stops abruptly as they reach the edge of the shore, spinning to face them and putting her hands on her hips. “As I don’t fancy having to explain to the Board of Governors why the sudden increase in squid population has caused flooding on the Hogwarts grounds, _or_ argue with the merpeople over the contraceptive wards _again,_ that egg sack needs to be removed from the water.”

Draco seems to have caught on to where this is going, and he shakes his head, looking out towards the lake with trepidation. “There’s got to be some kind of spell we can use for that,” he says, twisting his fingers together nervously. “ _Accio_ egg sack?”

“Unfortunately, the giant squid has become very attuned to magic, and will not take kindly to attempts to hurt its offspring,” McGonagall says. “Which is why you’ll have to do this the Muggle way.”

“The Muggle way,” Draco repeats, voice flat.

“Um, what do you mean?” Harry asks, nervous.

With a wave of her wand, McGonagall drops the Disillusionment on an object he hadn’t noticed before.

It’s a rowboat.

“A boat?” Harry can tell from Draco’s voice that he’s teetering on the edge of full-blown anger, but McGonagall either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

“You’ll be using this aquascope to find where in the lake the egg sack is located,” McGonagall says, walking over to the rowboat and lifting something that was sitting inside. It looks like a large cone connected to a tube, with a ring around the narrow end to use as a handle. “It’s been enchanted to show cephalopods in green light, and you can use this dial on the side to adjust the depth at which you are viewing.” She points out the knob, and then hands the aquascope to Harry, who takes it in stunned silence. It’s lighter than he expected.

“And what do we do once we spot the giant egg sack?” Draco asks. He’s got his arms crossed over his chest, and Harry wonders if it’s to hide the fact that he’s fidgeting.

“There’s a net in the boat that you can use to collect it,” McGonagall explains. “It will expand to accomodate the size of the sack without letting any of the eggs escape.”

“Hogwarts owns a Marimagical Net?” Harry interrupts. It’s a unique piece of equipment, unfortunately created by an American wizard, and therefore heavily patented and expensive to get, even though they make magical marine study so much easier. He’d asked the Headmistress if he could get one to use for lessons with his N.E.W.T. students, and had been told that the expense was extravagant.

“For emergencies such as this,” McGonagall says, tone arch. “Not for educational purposes, Harry.”

“That’s a bit—”

“How do you expect—”

McGonagall interrupts them both with a clap of her hands, a gesture reminiscent of Dumbledore. “I have a busy afternoon ahead of me,” she says. “If you haven’t found it by tonight, do make sure you come off the lake before it gets dark. Some of the predatory fish are nocturnal.”

With that, she sweeps away. Draco glares after her, clearly riled. Harry tries to distract him by poking him with the lens end of the aquascope, shooting him a commiserating smile once he gets Draco’s attention.

“I guess she’s still angry with us about the wards coming down, huh?”

Draco shakes his head. “This is ridiculous. _I_ had a busy afternoon ahead of me, too!”

“At least we don’t have to make potions with Slughorn.”

“Potter, you sound like a student who’s excited about skipping class.” Draco sighs. “It’s unbecoming.”

Harry shrugs. “How do we get this thing in the water, anyway?” he wonders, pushing the rowboat with the toe of his shoe. It’s painted black and utterly unremarkable; Harry would suspect it of being one of the boats that the first years use to approach the castle, except he now knows that they are spelled not to sink, and he doesn’t trust that McGonagall is feeling that charitable to himself and Draco.

“You’re not suggesting we actually do this.”

“What other choice do we have?” Harry says. “Profe—Minerva is right, we can’t let the eggs hatch. We’d end up with an infestation of giant squid.”

“There has to be a better way to find this thing than _rowing across the lake,_ ” Draco argues.

“The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be done,” Harry counters. He pushes at the rowboat more purposefully now, and it slides across the rocks, reaching the point on the shore that has been recently dampened by waves. As they watch, another one comes and picks the boat up, carrying it a few inches further into the water.

“For Merlin’s sake, you’re going to lose our stupid boat!” Draco says. He pulls out his wand and performs a complicated-looking charm that surrounds the boat with a lavender mist. “Go on, get in, and then I’ll have it push us off.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“There’s a lake on the Manor estate, obviously,” Draco says, pushing Harry ahead of him into the boat. 

They settle in facing each other. Draco stares at the oar distastefully, then picks it up and hands it to Harry, who reluctantly takes it.

“I guess we’re doing this, then,” Draco says.

Harry nods, and with another wave of Draco’s wand they float away from shore.

***

“I can’t believe Hogwarts has a Marimagical Net and McGonagall wouldn’t let me use it in my lessons,” Harry says.

Draco groans, banging his forehead against the aquascope. “You’ve mentioned,” he says through his teeth. This must be the third time Harry’s mentioned it since they got on the boat—third, fifth, tenth; Draco’s losing track at this point. The sun is still high in the sky, beating down on them with hot autumn rays, not yet weakened by the approach of winter, so they can’t have been out here for longer than a few hours. It only _feels_ like eternity.

“They’re expensive pieces of equipment,” Harry says, also not for the first time. “If we have one, we should be using it for education! How is keeping it hidden away on the off-chance that we need it for something like this a good use of resources?”

“You said it yourself, Harry,” Draco retorts, “it would be _really bad_ if the eggs hatched and we ended up with more than one giant squid.”

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Harry grumbles.

Draco rolls his eyes. On his list of things to be annoyed about today, the Headmistress hogging the Marimagical Net does not rank at all. He would rather be inside than on a boat, first of all; it’s a small craft and Harry keeps shifting around and making it rock more than necessary. This is an inane task, secondly—his eye hurts where he’s been pressing it to the aquascope, he’s got quite the crick in his neck from bending over to put the lens in the water, and he hasn’t caught sight of anything that resembles a giant egg sack, or that is lit up in yellow. Worst of all, it’s been several hours of stilted conversation with Harry. They used to be able to talk all night, jumping from topic to topic with ease, trailing off into silence and then picking back up somewhere else without ever feeling awkward.

Now they are stuck repeating the same exchanges as they drift around the lake being splashed by sea spray.

“This is pointless,” Harry says, echoing Draco’s earlier thoughts. He’d gone from enthusiastic to miserable soon after they got into the boat and it became clear how difficult their task would be. The lake always seems larger once you’re on it or in it than when you’re standing on the shore.

“I’m surprised to hear you questioning what the Headmistress told you,” Draco says pointedly. “I thought shutting up and doing as you’re told was your specialty.”

A muscle jumps in Harry’s jaw, and Draco knows he’s crossed a line. He’s brought up something that Harry told him in confidence several years ago; even worse, he’s made it a joke. Maybe he could have gotten away with saying it to Harry if he was in a good mood, back when they were close. But they aren’t close anymore, even if they’ve agreed to be friendly, and Harry isn’t in a good mood right now. Neither of them are.

“I shouldn’t have—”

“You know, Malfoy—”

They both stop, staring at each other.

Harry finally breaks the silence. “You can’t have it both ways. Either we’re friends, or we’re not.”

“I thought you were the one who didn’t want to be friends anymore.” It’s petty, but Draco can’t help it. They’ve never really talked about it, just skimmed around the topic for years, and here, stuck together in the middle of the Great Lake, seems as good a time as any to bring it up.

Harry is obviously surprised. “What do you mean?”

“You stopped replying to my letters,” Draco says, dropping the aquascope so he can list things off on his fingers. “You didn’t visit me when you came back to the city, you said you were too busy to get together over Christmas—”

“Your first year as a teacher is difficult, you know that—”

“So difficult you can’t catch up over your _months-long summer break?_ ”

“People grow apart, you know—”

“I missed talking with you—”

“—you’ve never mentioned—”

“—treating me like dirt—”

“—maybe I was worried—”

“—I don’t know why I thought—”

The boat bobs precariously. Harry’s stopped rowing, Draco realizes, and they’ve floated out further than they meant to during their distracted shouting match.

He grabs the sides of the rowboat, knuckles white. “What the fuck was that?”

Harry’s gone pale, eyes darting around nervously. “I don’t know.”

“Why did you stop rowing! Start rowing again!”

Harry does so without arguing—more than anything else, a sign of how nervous he is—but as soon as the edge of the oar breaks the surface of the water, a tentacle reaches up and rips it out of his hand.

“Shit!” Harry yells, pulling his hand back and clutching it to his chest. The boat sways precariously, the water underneath them suddenly choppy and rough, and some of it splashes over the side, pooling in the bottom and soaking their feet.

“Fuck!” Draco cries. He can’t think of what to do, his mind completely blank. He holds onto the boat with all his strength, his terrified gaze locking with Harry’s, before the boat rocks mightily underneath them, tilting up on one side and toppling them into the water.

****

**Sunday**

When Tibby realizes Harry’s been awake for awhile already, she jumps onto the bed, sticking her head close to his. He turns to bury his face in the pillow, feeling her curious wet nose against his ear. It tickles. With a groan, he flops onto his back, reaching out one hand to pet Tibby’s head absent-mindedly. She lets him pull her against his side for a brief moment before jumping over his chest and settling near his hip, out of grabbing distance.

“I know you want to be fed, but I’m not ready to face the world yet,” Harry tells her. She yawns.

Yesterday was, in a word, awful—clinging to the boat and struggling with slippery wands to right it and return to shore, as the water churned ominously underneath them. The disappointment of failing in their task had been overshadowed by the sheer humiliation of reaching the shore, bedraggled and dripping, and coming face-to-face with a pitying McGonagall and a shocked Hermione. Worst of all—and Harry doesn’t even know what it says about him, that after an evening spent pulling seaweed out of his hair and the continued threat of squid overpopulation, this is what he’s chosen to focus on—he and Draco had fought.

A proper fight, too. Nothing reserved or friendly about it. Harry’s always known that Draco blames him for the way they lost touch—and it is his fault—but it’s one thing to know, and another to have it shouted at him from the other side of a rowboat. He rubs his palms into his eyes with a sigh.

So much for maintaining a friendly and professional relationship, then.

Tibby paws at his stomach and he opens his eyes, shaking his head. “I’m a fool to like him, aren’t I?” he asks. She whines. “I got scared and pushed him away,” Harry says. “I shouldn’t have—and now it’s too late. I guess that’s just the way it goes.”

Tibby yips, standing up and stretching, and comes over to sniff at Harry’s forehead.

“Are you going to pet me now?” he asks.

He’s preparing Tibby’s food when there’s a knock on his door. Who’s coming to see him this early on a Sunday? Catching a glance of the clock, Harry realizes it’s later than he thought, and reluctantly opens the door.

His reluctance vanishes when it opens to reveal Ron’s familiar bright hair and tall, wiry frame.

“Harry!” Ron’s smile is bright, as always. He reaches in for a hug, which Harry returns in a bit of a daze before stepping aside to usher Ron in. Ron drops into an armchair, ever comfortable in Harry’s space even if he hasn’t spent much time in these actual rooms, and watches as Harry putters around the kitchenette, getting Tibby’s food out and making them both a cup of coffee.

“What brings you here?” Harry says, glancing at Ron before he bends over to dig through the refrigerated cabinet—he could have sworn he had cream in here somewhere.

“Hermione had to attend a trial today, but she thought you could probably use some company after your afternoon swim yesterday.” Ron waggles his eyebrows with the joke.

“You’re only allowed to stay if you aren’t going to give me a hard time about that,” Harry says, frowning.

“I’m not!” Ron says immediately, then cracks a grin. “It sounds like it was hilarious, though.”

“ _Ron._ ”

Ron laughs as Harry sets Tibby’s bowl on the floor and she comes barreling in from the bedroom. After a few bites, she notices Ron is there and runs over to greet him, jumping on the couch to knead at his legs while he pets her. Ron is one of Tibby’s favorite people, even though she sees him rarely.

“How are you, Miss Tibby?” Ron asks as Harry comes to join them in the living room, setting their coffees on the table. “Getting into trouble as usual?”

“Plenty of trouble,” Harry answers, taking a sip of coffee. “She’s pregnant.”

“ _What?_ ” Ron looks back and forth between Tibby and Harry incredulously. “She isn’t.”

“She is. I’m sure Hermione told you about the whole contraceptive ward thing?”

Ron nods. “It’s wild that we never heard about it. Makes sense to have them, though.”

“Right. Well, Malfoy has a Quandum too, a male one, and he’s gone and knocked Tibby up.”

“She doesn’t look pregnant.”

“It only happened a few weeks ago,” Harry says. “And she’s a marsupial anyway. But Malfoy checked it first and I confirmed it. It’s true.”

Ron looks like he’s having trouble holding back laughter. “Isn’t that interesting.”

“What?”

“You and Draco Malfoy being pet grandfathers together,” Ron says, shaking his head and snorting.

“You said you weren’t going to give me a hard time!”

“About the lake thing, I said! Harry, you can’t expect me not to comment on something like this.” Tibby has finally returned to her food, so Ron picks up his coffee. “You have to admit that it’s funny.”

Harry lets his head thump against the back of the couch. “I don’t have to admit anything.”

“Fine, fine.” Ron sighs. “We can talk about something besides the fact that Malfoy is going to be your sort-of in-law.”

“ _Thank you._ ”

“How are things going with you, anyway? You haven’t come by since the beginning of the year.” Ron watches Harry over his coffee, blue eyes steady. Harry loves Ron and Hermione equally, of course he does, but there’s no question that discussing his problems with Hermione is very different than talking about them with Ron. Hermione can’t hide that she’s doing mental calculations while you speak, making judgments that may not be in your favor. She’s a problem-solver, always ready to jump in with a plan whether you want her to or not. Ron slows down, lets you finish, really listens, and only then asks if you want his opinion on the subject.

“You know September’s always busy,” Harry says. “And now with all these extra responsibilities because of the wards, I have hardly any free time.” He smiles at Ron. “Thank you for coming to see me, by the way.”

“Of course!” Ron says with a nod. “Hermione forgot a book she needed at the house, so it was the perfect excuse to stop by. What extra responsibilities do you mean?”

Harry groans. “Extra rounds, making contraceptive potions. Other duties as assigned.” He rolls his eyes. “That’s what the lake thing was yesterday. And all of it with Malfoy. It’s like McGonagall is trying to torture us.”

Ron laughs. “She might be,” he admits. “Didn’t you two cause this, anyway?”

“No comment.”

“Come on, mate—” Suddenly Tibby bolts across the room at full speed, and Ron jumps, dropping his coffee. “Fuck!”

Harry grabs his wand, Vanishing the broken porcelain and spilled coffee. “Are you alright?” he asks Ron. “You didn’t burn yourself, did you?”

“No, it missed my leg.”

Harry nods. “I’ll get you another cup.”

“I can get it,” Ron says, standing to head to the kitchen. “Anyway, you were saying you have more things to do with Malfoy.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, clearing his throat. “He just gets to me,” he says. “And we used to get along—we were friends for a bit there after university.” Ron’s expression doesn’t waver, confirming Harry’s suspicion that Hermione had already told him. “But now it’s like we’re right back in school, at each other’s throats all the time. I go in with the best intentions, and we end up fighting.”

Ron hums sympathetically. “When do you have to see him next?”

“We’re supposed to do rounds tonight.” Harry shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s going to go well.” Draco had been fuming as they stood on the shore yesterday, dripping while McGonagall questioned them and Hermione cast Diagnostic and Hot-Air Charms. He knows a hot shower, dry pajamas, and a good night’s sleep helped improve his mood, but can’t assume the same will be true of Draco.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Ron says, choosing his words carefully, “but you don’t _have_ to be friends with him, Harry.”

Harry furrows his brow, confused. “What do you mean?”

“It’s alright for you not to be friends, if you don’t get along. I mean, you’re never going to be like this”—he twists two fingers together—“with all of your co-workers. Once the ward situation is sorted out, you and Malfoy won’t have to work together much anyway, right?”

“Right,” Harry says. He knows Ron is trying to comfort him, but the thought makes his heart twist in his chest. It’s true—this is Draco’s second year at Hogwarts, and all last year they barely interacted, avoiding each other and maintaining distance by unspoken agreement. Even if the fighting grates at Harry, he’d rather have this—the possibility of friendship with Draco again, and all the complications that brings with it—then nothing at all.

Ron must sense his discomfort. “Unless you want to be friends with him,” he says hastily. “Which is obviously fine too. I just, you know, I don’t want to see you beating yourself up over not getting along with someone if it was just out of a sense of obligation.”

The room is bright with mid-morning sun, but the sense of quiet that descends over them feels reminiscent of the hours late at night, when darkness eases the discomfort of confession and secrets are more easily revealed. “I want to be friends with him,” Harry says, and the words come out quiet but confident. He’s proud that his voice doesn’t shake as he continues. “I want to be friends with him,” he says again. “I want to be…”

The end of his sentence hangs in the air, unspoken but obvious. Harry isn’t even sure how to put it into words. More, that’s what he wants with Draco. More, and everything.

“I see,” Ron says softly, inclining his head. He watches Harry with a calculating expression. “Have you talked to him about it?”

“I don’t know how I would,” Harry admits. “Talking doesn’t really…go well.”

“Hmm,” Ron says. “Well, maybe instead of talking about it, you could try to show him that’s how you feel? Try not to take the bait the next time he starts an argument.”

“Because we all know how good I am at that,” Harry jokes.

Ron laughs. “It can’t hurt to try, right?”

“No, I guess it can’t.”

***

Draco glances sidelong at Harry as they make their way from Ravenclaw Tower to Gryffindor. He’s been uncharacteristically silent this evening, giving Draco a perfunctory greeting and ignoring the comment Draco made about his robes. Mephistopheles and Tibby have disappeared off to who-knows-where, so they are a quiet pair as they make their way through the corridors. Harry seems to be lost in thought, but Draco couldn’t begin to guess what about. His own thoughts feel loud as they bounce around in his head. Harry’s casual clothing reminds him of how he’d look when he’d show up to Draco’s door late at night, in clothes he’d only thrown on so Draco could peel them back off. It’s not a memory that Draco should be thinking about right now, but he can’t help himself.

At first, he thinks the noise is in his memories too—the low gasps and moans of pleasure that had echoed in his small bedroom, the wet sucking noises that accompanied one of Harry’s always-enthusiastic blowjobs. Then he sees Harry’s confused expression, and realizes the noises aren’t just in his head: they’re coming from the far end of the corridor, where he can now see that one of the tapestries is swaying suspiciously.

“For fuck’s sake,” Draco whispers. He’d wanted an easy night of patrolling before he rolled into bed and prepared to face another week, not to catch students _in flagrante delicto._ Why can’t his life ever be fair?

Harry goggles at the tapestry, then turns to Draco with a shocked expression. “People actually do that?” he whispers. “People actually have sex in the school corridors?”

“I don’t know, Potter,” Draco hisses. “I personally prefer to fuck in a bed.” Harry flushes, and Draco knows they are both thinking of all the things they used to get up to in Draco’s bed.

“I guess we have to break this up,” Harry says hesitantly. The noises are getting louder, and if it were up to Draco, they would turn around and leave, and he’d never have to know which of his students he’s eavesdropping on.

“ _I_ don’t want to do that,” he says, crossing his arms.

“Well we can’t let them keep going!”

“They’re probably almost done,” Draco replies. “We could just wait—”

“Malfoy!”

“ _Fine!_ ” Draco whisper-shouts. Clearing his throat, he takes a few steps further into the corridor, letting them fall heavier than normally. “Professor Potter, I can’t believe we haven’t run into any students out of bed after hours,” he says, pitching his voice to carry. Abruptly all noise from behind the tapestry stops.

Harry laughs silently, making his footsteps heavy as he walks to meet Draco. “It’s very odd, Professor Malfoy,” he agrees.

There’s a rushed shuffling noise from behind the tapestry, as though someone was trying to re-do their clothes but was hastily stopped. Draco thinks he hears someone say “ _wait til they leave!_ ” and stifles a snort.

“We should probably circle back to this area in a few minutes to make sure we haven’t missed anyone,” Draco says seriously. “I wasn’t expecting the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws to be so well-behaved!”

“I think you’re overdoing it,” Harry whispers.

“I’m not!”

Harry rolls his eyes, but his tone is the same falsely cheery one when he speaks. “Let’s go check on the Hufflepuffs next,” he says, grabbing Draco’s arm and towing him out of the corridor. As they round the corner there’s an explosion of muffled movement, and then the pounding of two sets of feet. Harry pulls Draco down a side corridor and a moment later, two black-clad figures bolt past where they were just standing, in the direction of the Gryffindor Common Room.

Draco feels Harry shaking, and turns to see him doubled over in laughter, both hands pressed to his mouth to try and muffle the noise. The sight sets him off too, and he can’t help joining in.

“ _Wait til they leave!_ ” Harry mimicks. He grabs Draco’s shoulder to support himself as he shakes with giggles, and Draco’s own laughter dies in his throat at the sudden warmth of Harry touching him.

Luckily Harry doesn’t notice, and lets go soon enough, wiping away tears with the heel of his hand.

“Sometimes I can’t believe them,” Draco says, for lack of anything more clever.

Harry nods in agreement. “Blowjobs in the corridor are certainly risky.”

“That’s Gryffindors for you,” Draco replies, and Harry rolls his eyes.

‘Yes, idiots, the lot of us. I know what you think.”

Draco doesn’t know how to respond to that, his emotions still in turmoil from the previous few minutes—Harry’s laughter and closeness have done unfortunate things to his heart. Harry begins to walk down the corridor, and Draco follows automatically. A few minutes later Harry stops and bends at the waist. Draco quickly averts his eyes from Harry’s arse and realizes he’s leaning down to greet Tibby and Mephistopheles, who have just materialized on the landing.

“Hello, Tibs. Hello, Mephisto.” Both Quandums twine around Harry’s legs before Mephistopheles breaks away to greet Draco. He scratches Mephisto’s head as he leans his weight into Draco’s legs. Tibby is up on her hind paws, kneading at Harry’s thigh; after a moment he picks her up, which seems to be what she was after, as she curls against his chest happily.

Draco crosses his arms across his chest, feeling self-conscious. He knows Mephistopheles loves him, but the Quandum doesn’t tolerate being handled; normally Draco doesn’t mind, but at this moment he wishes he could pick up Mephisto to prove to Harry that his pet likes him too. At least when they begin walking again, Tibby still snuggled against Harry’s chest, Mephistopheles is happy to stay beside Draco. That may have more to do with Tibby’s current location, though.

“How is Tabitha doing?” Draco asks, nodding to the Quandum. “She should be close to delivery now, shouldn’t she?” He did his own research on Quandum gestation after they realized Tibby was pregnant, and remembers that their pregnancies last two and a half weeks.

“It’ll be in the next few days,” Harry confirms. “Not that her behavior will change much right away, once the joey is in the pouch.”

“Right,” Draco says. “You know, I was reading about Quandum birth, and I came across a salve that’s supposed to make the joey’s journey to the pouch easier—it’s an easy recipe, I can brew some for you if you’d like.”

Harry pets the back of Tibby’s head. “That’s alright,” he says. “I’m not worried about the birth.”

“The book said that birth is the most dangerous part of gestation. If the joey falls off while making the journey, there will be nothing Tabitha can do to help.”

“Most Quandums give birth in the wild and are perfectly fine,” Harry says.

“It’s really no trouble for me—”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I teach Care of Magical Creatures,” Harry interrupts. “My specialty is in magical animal husbandry. I think I can care for one pregnant Quandum just fine.”

“I’m just trying to help!”

“If you wanted to help, maybe you should have had Mephisto neutered,” Harry says, voice getting louder. “It’s not only my responsibility, as the one who owns the female pet.” Tibby jumps from Harry’s arms, shaking herself with discomfort and scuttling away. Mephistopheles follows her.

“Well I didn’t know there would be another Quandum for him to impregnate at Hogwarts, did I?” Draco snaps.

“Neither did I, Malfoy!”

“Gentlemen!” Septima Vector lets her door slam shut behind her as she steps into the hallway. Draco hadn’t realized they were in one of the corridors that housed the professor’s rooms, but now that he looks up, he recognizes that his own quarters are just around the corner. His face heats as he notices lights under a few of the other doors. Their argument had been pretty loud.

“I appreciate that you are taking on additional patrol duties, but need I remind you that it is a school night?” Septima says tartly. “It is past ten o’clock, and many of us are trying to sleep.”

Draco’s face burns. “We’re so sorry, Septima.”

“It won’t happen again,” Harry emphasizes behind him.

“Have a good night!” Draco adds, as she goes back into her room. Harry gives him a weird look, and he thinks Septima might have glared. As if this night could get any worse.

It can, it turns out, because another door in the hallway opens, and Granger peeks her head out.

“Harry!” she greets in a whisper. Closing her door carefully behind her, she comes over to them. She’s wearing a flannel dressing gown and slippers with little dog faces on them. “Did Septima just yell at you?”

“Yeah,” Harry admits sheepishly. Draco looks at his feet. He wonders how soon he’ll be able to make his escape—would it be too much to go back to his room right now, given they’re already here?

“Oh no,” Granger fusses.

“Did we wake you up?” Harry asks.

“I wasn’t asleep yet, so no, but—well, you were talking rather loudly.”

Harry glares at Draco, like it’s his fault. Draco rolls his eyes.

“Is everything okay?” Granger asks, looking nervously between them.

“Just an odd night of patrolling,” Harry says. Then he turns to Draco. “You know, I think we should probably just call it a night. How much trouble can the Slytherins really get up to on a Sunday night, anyway?”

Quite a lot, Draco knows from experience, but he says nothing. Granger’s hand is on Harry’s elbow, no doubt to pull him into her room to debrief as soon as Draco is gone. His chest fills with a strange mixture of jealousy and longing; he wishes Millie lived closer to Hogwarts.

“That’s fine,” Draco says, taking the opportunity to escape. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Potter. Goodnight, Granger.”

As he turns to go, he hears Granger’s door opening again, and two pairs of footsteps going inside. He tells himself he doesn’t care if they’re talking about him.

****

**Tuesday**

After his first class of the morning, an owl swoops in and drops a note on Harry’s desk. He recognizes it instantly as the school owl McGonagall favors—a barn owl with a glare that can almost rival the Headmistress’s—and the eggs he had for breakfast curdle in his stomach. The owl swoops away without waiting for a reply, and Harry approaches hid desk nervously.

The missive, when he opens it, is short.

_Harry,_

_Further developments with the wards. Please see me in my office today at 5._

_—Minerva_

Harry wants to hope that the wards are back up, problem solved, no need for him to be sneaking about with Malfoy anymore, but he knows he’s being overly optimistic. Further developments, McGonagall’s note said, which isn’t a good sign. This is what he’s thinking of as he leaves his room and starts towards the hidden door to the Headmistress’s office, which is why he doesn’t notice Draco until he almost runs into him on the first floor landing.

“For Merlin’s sake, Potter,” Draco huffs, brushing off his arm where they’d collided. “Look where you’re going, can’t you?”

“Sorry,” Harry says reluctantly, because he may hate apologizing to Draco, but he’s enough of an adult to admit that this is his fault.

Draco says nothing, but falls into step beside Harry rather than walking ahead of him, so Harry figures he’s forgiven.

“What do you think the meeting’s about?” he asks, as they start up the next staircase.

“Oh, probably nothing good,” Draco says with a sigh. He pulls something out of his pocket. “By the way, I brewed this for Tabitha.”

Automatically, Harry reaches out to take the jar. It’s filled with something dark green and sticky looking. “What is this?”

“The salve I was telling you about,” Draco says. “If you spread it on her belly for the next few days, it will help the joey have an easier journey to the opening of her pouch.”

Harry would be risking a claw to the face, or even a jet of the hot smoke that Quandums can release when they are feeling especially endangered, if he tried to touch Tibby’s stomach on a good day, let alone now that she is pregnant. “I don’t see that going so well,” he says mildly, going to hand the jar back to Draco as they come to the next landing. “And besides, like I said, I don’t think anything extra is necessary.”

“It can’t hurt,” Draco says with a frown. He crosses his arms, not taking the jar.

Harry rolls his eyes. “But it’s not necessary,” he repeats. “Quandums usually live in the wild, Draco. They don’t need assistance from wizards to give birth.”

Draco frowns, a small and frustrated thing. “If the joey falls off—”

“There’s nothing the mother can do, that’s true,” Harry says. “But that’s the case for all marsupials. It’s not our place to interfere.”

“Don’t you want to help them?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve been giving Tibby a prenatal supplement mix since we found out she was pregnant,” Harry snaps. “That’s the kind of thing that’s actually helpful, which I know, because this is the topic I studied. I haven’t even heard of this salve before—I don’t know what’s in it. I’m not giving it to her. End of story.” He thrusts the jar towards Draco.

Draco takes it, looking stunned. Harry pushes past him towards the gargoyle statue, irritation pulsing through him. He has a degree in the field of Magical Animal Biology. He teaches Care of Magical Creatures. He’s had Tibby for longer than Draco has had Mephisto, and still Draco doesn’t think Harry can handle a simple task like overseeing a Quandum birth without his assistance.

Draco’s footsteps slap against the stone floor as he catches up with Harry. “I was only trying to help,” he says, as Harry gives the password and steps onto the stone staircase, which begins to move. Draco steps on behind him.

“I don’t need your help,” Harry says simply. “I don’t come into your classroom and tell you how to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, do I?”

“No, everyone else just wishes you would,” Draco snarks.

“For fuck’s sake, Malfoy!” Harry shouts, just as the staircase comes to a stop and the door to the Headmistress’s office opens.

The faces of most of their colleagues blink at them in shock. Apparently this is a full staff meeting, not just a meeting between McGonagall, Harry, and Draco. Harry’s face burns as he steps quickly through the doorway, making a beeline for the far side of the room where he sees Hermione waiting. He doesn’t look behind him to see how Draco is faring.

“That was quite the entrance,” Hermione says tartly.

“Don’t,” Harry says, and is saved from Hermione ignoring his request by McGonagall approaching her desk at the front of the room.

“Thank you all for coming,” she says, Conjuring a few rows of chairs with a wave of her wand. “Please, sit down.”

They do. McGonagall remains seated at her desk, still commanding the room. A few of the portraits look down from the walls, though they are silent. McGonagall shuffles a few papers into a stack before she looks up and addresses them.

“Thank you all for your flexibility and extra hours while we are handling the situation of the contraceptive wards,” she says. “Hermione has been working diligently to rectify the situation, and has successfully isolated the contraceptive wards from the many other wards on the school property; however, there is still the manner of fixing them to deal with. She has informed me that it should be resolved in the next two weeks.”

There are some murmurs among the professors at this news, though it’s hard to gauge the sentiment behind them. Harry glances to the side at Hermione, but she is facing forward, listening to McGonagall; her face gives away nothing of what she is thinking.

“That’s the good news. The bad news is that there is a further complication we have to deal with.” McGonagall sighs. “Although the wards are useful for preventing the overpopulation among the animals on the grounds, obviously their primary and most important function is to prevent student pregnancies. As a measure to help ensure this continues while the wards are down, we’ve been running additional patrols—as you all know—but I also placed some additional spells on the dorms.

“We all know that the boys are never allowed into the girls’ dorms, but the spells I cast restrict anyone from entering a room that was not theirs—girls can’t enter the boys dorms, and students of different houses and years cannot go into each other’s rooms for the time being either.”

Flitwick raised his hand. “Excuse me, Professor, but I thought we were trying to keep the fact that these wards were down, and indeed their very existence, a secret from the students. Won’t they notice if they suddenly aren’t able to enter their friends’ rooms?”

McGonagall nodded. “I was hoping it would escape their notice, but unfortunately that has not been the case. The Ravenclaw students have been particularly offended by it, to the point that they have figured out a way to counter the enchantments.” There are groans from several of the teachers, and Harry hears someone mutter _typical._

“That means,” McGonagall continues, speaking louder, “that we need to have eyes on the Ravenclaw Common Room every night until this is all sorted out. I will be assigning pairs of professors to sit up and make sure none of the students are out of their dorms—I know it’s not ideal!” she says, as the complaints from the teachers get louder. “But we can’t trust this to Prefects. You will be relieved from any morning duties, including classes, after your assigned day.”

“Can’t you re-cast the spell?” Slughorn asks.

“I don’t think that would be a wise course of action, given that they’ve already figured out how to dismantle it. Hermione is worried that any stronger spell I might cast would interfere with her work reconstructing the wards.”

That makes sense, but Harry sympathizes with the murmur of discontent that is sweeping through the staff. Sitting up all night in the Ravenclaw Common Room doesn’t sound very appealing, and he has an unfortunate feeling he knows who his partner will be. And he’s right—when McGonagall ends the meeting by reading off everyone’s watch assignments, he and Draco are given next Sunday.


	4. Week Four

****

**Thursday**

Draco is grading papers in his office when he is interrupted by a knock on the door. Looking up, he sees Richard Johnson standing in the doorway.

“Hello Richard,” Draco says mildly, laying down his quill. He has a feeling this won’t be a quick conversation.

“Professor Malfoy,” Richard says. He’s holding tightly to the strap of his school bag, expression nervous. “Do you have a minute?”

“Of course.” Draco gestures to the seat across from him, spelling the door closed behind Richard as he makes his way towards the desk. “What can I help you with today?”

“I wouldn’t say—I’m not asking for help,” Richard says clumsily. “I, uh—it’s a bit personal.”

Draco isn’t surprised. Richard is a seventh year now, but last year, when he was in sixth, he’d somehow inferred that Draco wasn’t straight and proceeded to come out to him. It had been Draco’s first experience with helping a student with a problem that wasn’t academic, and he’d been, quite frankly, scared shitless. But he’d muddled through it, and must have done well enough not to scar the poor boy, if he’s coming to Draco again.

“That’s fine,” Draco says now, folding his hands on his desk and hoping that the question isn’t _too_ personal. There are limits, after all. “As long as you feel comfortable telling me about it, I’m happy to listen.”

Richard nods once, a quick bob of the head. He’s practically spitting with nervous energy. “I’ve been seeing someone,” he blurts out in a rush, and Draco keeps his expression placid, not betraying any of the shock he feels. “It’s going well,” Richard continues. “But it’s getting to that stage where—we’re at the age that—I think he’s going to expect more soon.”

Draco raises his eyebrows. “Expect more?” He knows what Richard is getting at, of course, but thinks it would be helpful to have him articulate it himself.

“More physical things,” Richard hedges, lowering his voice. “And I just…I don’t know if I’m ready for that?” He makes it into a question. “I mean, how are you supposed to know that you’re ready?”

Draco frowns, slightly. Not an overly large problem, really, but given the subject matter, he’s not sure how to say what he’s thinking. “If you’re asking me that, I think you may already know the answer,” he says gently.

Richard looks down, face pinking with embarrassment. “It’s just that I think I should be ready.” He looks up, unsure. “Right?”

“There’s no rule about when you’re supposed to be ready for that kind of thing,” Draco tells him. “It has nothing to do with your age, or the amount of time you’ve been in a relationship.”

Richard is nodding, although he doesn’t quite look convinced.

Draco suppresses a sigh, and digs a little bit deeper. “It may seem like everyone else is ahead of you, but that’s not true. In fact, they’re probably thinking the same thing as you are—worrying that they’re on pace with everybody else.”

“I guess.” Richard is nodding along somewhat absentmindedly, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. “I guess that makes sense.”

“It’s true,” Draco says. “Look. Sex is about communication and trust, alright? And I don’t say that to mean that you should only have sex with someone you’re in a serious relationship with—that’s not what I mean at all—but it’s going to be loads better if you’re with someone you trust. If you don’t trust the other person, for whatever reason—if they’re pressuring you or making you feel like there’s an ultimatum—then you’re better off waiting, in my opinion.”

Draco’s worried he’s stepped over a line, putting a name to Richard’s hypothetical _something physical,_ but Richard doesn’t look uncomfortable, just thoughtful. “That makes sense,” he says with more conviction this time. “Thanks, Professor Malfoy.”

“Of course,” Draco says, and waves back when Richard throws a hand up over his shoulder before going back out into the corridor.

His advice to Richard feels a bit hypocritical, even if he’d meant it. Only have sex with someone you trust, he says, as though he hadn’t spent half a year rolling around in bed with a person with whom he’d fought on opposite sides of the war. But that fact didn’t mean there was no trust between him and Harry—somehow, their candor with each other outside the bed had transformed into clear communication within it. He could tell Harry to stop, to try it this way instead, and it was free of any offense it might have held when they were arguing.

Now Draco’s feeling morose. Sex with Harry had been good, that’s the problem. It had been _really_ good. And Draco loves working at Hogwarts, but it certainly doesn’t leave a lot of time for liaisons, either romantic or physical. If he’s feeling horny and doesn’t want to think about the way Harry’s lips felt on his skin, he can’t go to the nearest bar and find a substitute who won’t be as good, but will take his thoughts off Harry for the night.

****

**Friday**

Harry’s not sure what possesses him to send the Patronus to Draco. He’s been nothing but annoyed with Draco’s know-it-all attitude about Tibby’s pregnancy, and purposefully avoided his questions about it in the Great Hall the past few mornings. That morning, Draco scowled at him and said he only wanted to know that Mephisto hadn’t been eaten by a bear, which left Harry feeling suitably chagrined. As Tibby nears her delivery, Mephisto has been spending more and more time in Harry’s quarters—more time away from Draco, Harry realizes now. Maybe that’s why he does it—the thought of Draco alone in his rooms, despondent in the same way Harry is on the rare occasions Tibby disappears for days at a time, pushes him to unhealthy decision making. In any case, as soon as Harry notices Tibby licking the joey’s path onto her stomach, he pulls out his wand to contact Draco.

It’s not that late—dinner ended about an hour ago—but still, Harry doesn’t know if Draco will come. Maybe he’s gone to bed early, or is engrossed in something, or possibly he’s even got plans outside the castle—it’s not unheard of, and the professors aren’t restricted to staying on the grounds unless they have assigned duties. But Harry needn’t have worried, because a few minutes later Draco is knocking on his door.

When Harry opens it, he’s surprised to find Draco looking rumpled and nervous. He’s dressed more casually than Harry’s ever seen him—and he’s seen him naked—wearing loose sleep pants, an old Puddlemere t-shirt, and an open dressing gown. Harry ushers him inside, and Draco looks around, ill at ease. His arms are crossed tightly over his chest. Harry realizes that Draco’s never been inside his rooms before.

“She’s in the bedroom,” Harry explains. “Mephisto is in there too.”

Draco nods, once, sharp. “Will it disturb her if we watch? I mean, were you planning on that?”

Harry shrugs. “I think it will be fine. It shouldn’t be a very long process, it only takes a few minutes for the joey to reach the pouch once it’s been born.”

Draco’s picking at the cuff of his dressing gown; Harry can’t tell if his nervousness is a result of being in Harry’s space, or if it’s related to the upcoming birth.

“The bedroom is this way,” Harry says, gesturing, and Draco goes bright red.

 _Oh._ So it’s that, then.

Harry is suddenly aware that he’s dressed more casually than Draco has ever seen him, too—although he’s never favored robes the way Draco does, he at least usually wears jeans or proper trousers, not old joggers, worn threadbare at the knees, like he has on now. His jumper is stretched out at the neck, revealing more of his shoulders than Harry generally displays in public. He feels the beginnings of a blush coming on himself, and quickly turns to lead Draco into the bedroom.

Tibby is in the corner of the room, lying on her bed. She’s lounging on her side, looking surprisingly relaxed, the grooming of her stomach apparently done. Mephisto is standing guard at her feet, tall and alert.

“Did we miss it?” Draco asks, worried.

“I don’t think so,” Harry says. He hadn’t been gone that long to let Draco in. Pulling out his wand, he casts a gentle diagnostic spell and confirms that the joey is still in utero. “No, it hasn’t happened yet.”

“So what do we do now?” Draco says. He’s pitching his voice low, although neither of the animals seem to care about their presence in the room. Harry is equally quiet when he responds.

“I guess we wait,” he says, hoping it won’t be long. Although he wasn’t going to deprive Draco of this experience, now that he’s here it’s more awkward than Harry was expecting. “We can sit down if you want,” he offers.

Draco is silent for a moment in the wake of Harry’s suggestion. “Where?”

“Oh.” Harry looks around. The only chair in the room is covered with dirty laundry; he winces in embarrassment, for once regretting the fact that he doesn’t allow the house elves in to clean up after him. “On the bed?”

“Alright.”

Draco trails behind Harry as they walk to the bed, and they sit on the edge, facing Tibby. She and Mephisto are still ignoring the humans, which somehow makes the situation even more awkward; only a few minutes go by before Harry can’t resist the urge to fill the silence.

“It’s truly amazing,” he says. “The joey won’t have even developed eyes yet, but it will still be able to find its way to the pouch on instinct.”

“If it doesn’t fall off,” Draco says, contrarily. “If you had taken that salve—”

“It’s going to be fine,” Harry says. Beside him, Draco looks genuinely nervous, and Harry wonders if perhaps he’s been too harsh. He’s been able to handle Tibby’s pregnancy with grace because he already knows a lot about how it will go—it’s what he studied, after all. But Draco doesn’t have that knowledge to ease his worries. “She’s already licked the path, that will help the joey find its way. And she’ll be safe and comfortable here, there’s very little chance that the joey will fall off, which would be most likely to happen if she was disturbed.”

Draco still doesn’t look convinced, but at least he’s quiet, if sullen. But then his expression changes, and he leans forward, clutching at the edge of the bedspread. “Harry—is she—”

“It’s happening,” Harry breathes. Unthinking, he slides off the edge of the bed and onto his knees, to have a better view. Draco follows him.

Harry was expecting it to be more strenuous, or uncomfortable, but Tibby doesn’t seem especially bothered; it can’t be very painful, really, when the joey is the size of a Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Bean. It’s very red, and frankly looks kind of disgusting, the sort of thing that should definitely be inside the body rather than outside. The joey’s color is lurid against Tibby’s fur as it makes the journey up her body. Beside Harry, it seems like Draco is barely breathing; his own heart is in his throat, beating double-time as he waits for the joey to reach Tibby’s pouch. Despite his insistence to Draco that everything will be fine, he’s struck with nerves, and finds his fingers twitching towards his wand as the joey wobbles—could he intervene if it fell? could he cast a spell in time?—but it isn’t needed, as the joey soon disappears behind the thick flap of Tibby’s pouch.

There’s a beat of silence, and Harry’s heart rate begins to slow. Draco grabs for him, clutching at his wrist, thin fingers like a vise.

“Is it—”

“Yes,” Harry says, twisting his hand so their fingers are entwined. He squeezes Draco’s hand back. “The joey made it.”

Draco exhales, shaky and relieved, and when Harry glances over he sees that Draco is smiling, big and bright, open in a way Harry’s not privy to often.

“It made it,” Harry repeats, and Draco laughs, a happy sound. Mephisto startles at the noise, and Draco claps his hand over his mouth, looking shamed. That makes Harry laugh, but quieter.

“Now the joey will be locking onto one of her teats,” he says. “It won’t leave the pouch again for several months.”

“But we got to see it now,” Draco says. “That’s amazing.”

“It is.”

Tibby pulls herself onto her feet, nuzzling Mephisto, who yowls under his breath. She brushes past Harry on her way to the door, Mephisto trailing after her, and a minute later he hears the sound of her eating. It makes sense, he supposes. Giving birth is hungry work.

He and Draco are still holding hands. Harry looks down, marveling at the way their fingers look twined together, and when he raises his eyes again he finds Draco watching him intently. Comparing Draco’s eyes to a storm seems trivial or cliche, but in this moment it’s true; there’s a conflict boiling in them like rain over the sea, like Draco is torn, debating whether or not he should do something. Harry wonders if it’s the same thing he’s thinking about doing.

His question is answered when Draco yanks him in by the hand he’s holding, stopping when their noses are a hair’s width apart. With his free hand, Draco cups the back of Harry’s neck, playing with the short hairs there, tugging at the longer. Harry shivers, and tips just the slightest bit further forward to slide the tip of his nose alongside Draco’s.

“Harry,” Draco whispers, maybe a plea and maybe a question. His breath puffs along Harry’s lips as he speaks. It’s a response to the unspoken question, or maybe a plea of his own, and Harry pushes forward that last inch and presses their mouths together.

***

Draco’s hit with a wave of déjà vu when Harry pushes him from the floor back up onto the bed, and then climbs on top of him, leaning in to kiss his jaw. There had been an interval of kissing on the floor—messy and desperate, and then soft and sweet, slow enough for thoughts about things other than Harry’s lips to come back into Draco’s head. He’d been on the verge of worry, but then Harry had grabbed his waist, sliding his hand beneath Draco’s dressing gown and poking cold fingertips under the hem of his shirt. And then Draco’s thoughts had been taken over by memories of what those fingers could do, and the desire to get them on other parts of his body.

He curls his fingers in Harry’s hair, directing Harry’s mouth further down his neck. Harry complies and Draco arches up, pressing his body into Harry’s as much as he can. His dressing gown is tangled uncomfortably underneath him and his pajama trousers are doing nothing to hide his growing arousal, but he can tell Harry is in a similar state.

He pulls Harry’s head back up, kissing him hungrily, and hooks one leg around Harry’s thigh, using the new leverage to tip them sideways. Half on top of Harry, he starts pulling off his dressing gown; Harry catches on quickly, sitting up underneath Draco and watching with heavily lidded eyes as Draco’s dressing gown is tossed to the floor, followed by his shirt. Harry’s hands on his bare chest make him shiver; they’re cold, just like he remembers—Harry being the sort of person who is cursed with freezing extremities—but they make Draco feel hot. He guides Harry’s shirt up and over his head before sealing their mouths back together.

It’s the kind of kiss that’s easy to sink into. Draco lets himself relax from where he’d been holding himself so rigidly above Harry; he drapes his arms over Harry’s shoulders and they fall back onto the bed, still kissing, as Harry cards his hands through Draco’s hair. Their erections are pressed together between their bodies, thin fabric doing little to hide the way they are both being affected, and it’s lighting a fire in Draco’s core. He wants to consume Harry; wants to bring their bodies together with the same reckless abandon as when they were younger. He also wants to take it slowly, draw things out, spend so long taking Harry apart that the night becomes morning.

“Draco, _fuck,_ ” Harry gasps, fingers tightening in Draco’s hair, tugging at his scalp, as Draco grinds down against him. Draco laughs, kissing the next expletive right off of Harry’s lips. A moment later Harry breaks the kiss to moan. “Merlin, you feel—”

“So do you,” Draco says, nuzzling under Harry’s ear. Harry groans and squirms, grabbing Draco’s hips and holding their bodies together. Draco lets himself be tipped onto his back, intending to kiss Harry some more, but then he’s disappearing from between Draco’s arms, pulling back from him. Draco makes to follow him before he tracks the path he’s making, down Draco’s chest and settling in between his legs, and falls back against the pillows with a curse of his own.

Harry’s voice is low and Draco could swear he can feel the vibrations. “Are you opposed?”

“Opposed to what?” Draco asks, just to be contrary. The effect is somewhat ruined by the fact that he’s already breathless.

“You know what,” Harry says, lazily cupping his hand over Draco’s clothed erection, laughing when Draco bucks up against him.

“To you sucking my dick?” Draco says, and Harry laughs, shaking his head like he’s shocked at how brazen Draco is, even after everything. “I’m not opposed,” Draco continues. “Just cast the spells first.”

Harry nods like he remembers Draco’s preferences on protection spells, even though it’s been years since they used them together. Maybe he does remember. Draco certainly hasn’t forgotten the noise Harry makes when he’s about to come.

Harry leans away momentarily to grope around on the floor for his wand and whisper the familiar incantations, but then he’s pulling at the waistband of Draco’s sleep trousers, the elastic slipping easily over his hips once Draco lifts his arse to help. He’s not wearing pants, having been preparing to go to sleep when he got Harry’s Patronus, and Harry sucks in a sharp breath, biting his lip at the sight of Draco’s exposed cock. Draco watches Harry watching him, cataloguing the expression of desire in his eyes before he wraps one hand around the base and directs Draco’s cock past his lips.

Draco chokes on whatever he was going to say, squeezing his eyes shut and fisting his hands in the sheets as Harry slowly takes him in. He remembers how Harry always used to rush, treating fellatio like a race to the finish line, a challenge to Draco’s body. He’d go down fast and suck hard, and it always worked, taking Draco higher and higher until he was coming with Harry’s name on his lips. He thought he knew Harry’s technique, but it seems he’s learned some new tricks in the last few years.

Because now he’s going slow—moving carefully and, when Draco forces his eyes open, clearly savoring the experience, if the expression on his face is anything to go by. Every muscle in Draco’s body is locked, all his senses focusing on where Harry’s touching him—a hand on his hip and one on his groin, and that mouth, traveling up and down Draco’s cock like it’s on holiday.

“Harry, _Harry,_ ” he gasps, trying to press in closer on pure instinct. Harry holds him down, and Draco bucks up anyway, needing more. He wants—he doesn’t know what he wants. He wants Harry to start sucking him fast again, the way he did when they were younger. He wants Harry to slow down even further, to suspend him in this delicious torture for hours. He wants to reverse their positions and show Harry all the new tricks _he’s_ learned in the past few years. Draco wants to be closer to him.

“Wait, stop,” Draco says, and Harry pulls off immediately, his face a picture of concern. “Get up here,” Draco says, and Harry’s smiling when Draco grabs his face and pulls him in for another kiss that quickly turns dirty.

He pushes Harry onto his back, the momentum bouncing the mattress, and Harry presses his thigh up into Draco’s cock. Draco skims a hand down Harry’s bare chest until his questing fingers find the waistband of his joggers, and takes great pleasure in the way Harry’s fingers tighten and spasm on Draco’s arms when Draco first touches him.

“Draco,” he gasps, mouth open and lips bruised-red; Draco can’t resist leaning in to kiss them again, and again, and again. It’s hard to focus on what his hand is doing, except that Harry makes the most delicious noises when Draco twists his wrist just so, and it’s very motivating.

He’s so distracted with kissing that it takes him a few seconds to realize Harry is trying to say something against his lips; when he pulls back, hand slowing, Harry rolls his eyes fondly, one hand squeezing Draco’s shoulder. “Let me do you too,” he says, and Draco’s going to protest that the position won’t work, that he doesn’t mind waiting, but Harry pulls him forward and shifts his weight, and suddenly his hand is curled around Draco’s cock too. If he thought the kissing was distracting, it’s nothing compared to this—the simultaneous giving and receiving of pleasure; the butterflies that have taken up residence because he’s _touching Harry_ mingling with the white hot pleasure that’s pooling in his gut.

“Harry,” he breathes, or maybe thinks, or moans. One hand is curled in the pillow by Harry’s head, and the other is stroking his dick, hot and soft and tempting. It’s hard to focus on the sensation of Harry’s cock, though, when Harry’s got a hand on Draco as well—he’s easily lost in the simple push-pull motion, in the green of Harry’s eyes as he stares up at Draco, pupils blown wide with lust.

“Fuck, I missed this,” Harry says, and that’s what puts Draco over the edge. He shudders, whole body convulsing, squeezing Harry’s cock on reflex; with a familiar choked sob, Harry follows, arching off the bed and splattering Draco’s hip with come. His arms feel like jelly as he carefully leverages himself off Harry and collapses at his side, deeply tired. He has the thought that he should get up, clean himself off and go back to his room; he gets as far as reaching off the edge of the bed and feeling around for his wand in his dressing-gown. Someone casts a Cleaning Charm, because his body is free of sweat and come, but Draco couldn’t say if it was him or Harry that did it. He can go back to his room in the morning, he thinks blearily, as a warm cover falls on top of him and he drifts off to sleep.

****

**Saturday**

The first thing Harry becomes aware of when he wakes up is the fact that he’s naked.

He doesn’t usually sleep naked—maybe shirtless in the summer when it’s hot, but never when school is in session, just in case he has to get up abruptly in the middle of the night—and he rolls to the side, confused, to grope around on the nightstand for his glasses. They’re not on the nightstand, but he finds them on the edge of the bed instead and shoves them on his face. Upon sitting, the first thing he sees is the pile of his clothes on the floor beside the bed, and _oh._ Right. He had sex with Draco last night.

Draco himself is nowhere to be seen—he probably woke before Harry and ran back to his room, and honestly, who could blame him? That certainly hadn’t been what Harry was planning on happening when he sent the Patronus to Draco last night. He rubs his hands across his face, groaning. The noise must alert Tibby that he’s woken up, because he hears the clacking of her claws on the stone floor before she jumps onto the bed and crawls over his chest.

“Good morning,” he says, scratching her chin. She leans into the motion, chirping happily. “How are you feeling?” Harry asks, though the only response he gets is Tibby stepping off of his chest in order to get closer to his face, which she head-butts. Harry laughs. “Doing well, I see.”

She looks the same as she had the previous morning, and doesn’t seem to be moving any differently now that the joey is in the pouch. That’s what Harry expected—the joey is so small at the moment that its presence won’t affect her for another few months—but it’s still a relief to see that Tibby is her usual energetic self the morning after giving birth. Harry remembers how worried Draco had been as they watched the birth last night, and his mind skips ahead, giving him the image of Draco above him as they stroked each other’s cocks. He’d looked like a dream, silhouetted by the lamplight, eyes dark and hungry as he watched Harry’s face. And the way Draco had touched him—Harry had forgotten how it felt, the passion that Draco ignited in him. He’s never felt quite like that with anyone else, and in the intervening years, as he tried and failed to find the same wild heat with others, Harry had tried to believe it was a good thing it couldn’t be replicated. His relationship with Draco was so fiery because it was volatile, he told himself; sparks might fly between them in bed, but they’d never be able to coexist in a serious way. Having experienced it again, Harry thinks that he had under-estimated the importance of that wild passion.

He thinks, too, of the companionable silence that’s fallen between them a few times on their nightly patrols, and of the quiet, thoughtful way Draco speaks about Defense. He wonders if now, a few years wiser, there might be a chance for something between them beyond the physical.

Then he rolls over, burying his face in the pillows like he needs to bury that thought. Harry burned that bridge with Draco years ago, regardless of what happened last night. His pillow still smells like Draco’s shampoo. _Fuck._

He’s finally propelled out of bed when Tibby starts clawing at his hair. He pulls on last night’s joggers, sans pants, and pads blearily into the kitchen. To his relief, Mephisto isn’t there—he must have wandered off at some point in the night, or perhaps left in the morning with Draco. But that’s for the best—Harry doesn’t need any more reminders of Draco right now.

As it is, Harry’s doing a horrible job keeping his mind off the topic. As he goes about his morning routine—taking a few extra minutes to strip the sheets off his bed and replace them with fresh ones before he hops in the shower—his brain replays the previous night on a loop. That first kiss, when Harry hadn’t been able to help himself but Draco responded so willingly. The eager way he’d clutched at Harry as Harry relocated them to the bed. The way Draco had gasped his name, and the curve of his shoulder as they’d fallen asleep together.

Harry decides to go flying, hoping it might distract him from the thoughts rattling around in his head. He grabs his broom and a Snitch, making for the Quidditch pitch, but given that it’s a Saturday morning, it’s already occupied by what looks like the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Discouraged but not ready to give up, Harry goes on the search for another spot he might be able to fly. The morning air has a chill to it, so there aren’t many students out, and Harry finds a flat stretch of land along the border of the Forbidden Forest. He casts a ward to keep his Snitch from escaping before he releases it and starts to chase.

Maybe it’s the smaller space, or his loud runaway thoughts, but this distraction is not working as well as Harry hoped. He’s catching the Snitch easily, and still all he can think about is Draco’s eyes and the way he moaned when Harry kissed him. Harry pockets the Snitch and takes down his ward, opting to fly over the Forest instead. From above, the castle and its grounds look like a model village, the kind they used to put up in the toy shop at Christmas when he was a child. There had been a little train that traveled through the town, and Dudley would always hog the view, pushing little buttons that made the figurines wave or dance while Harry watched from the corner, painfully aware that he was lucky to have been allowed inside the store at all.

He swoops down low, shaking his head at his morose thoughts. The very top branches of the trees catch at the fabric of his joggers, and Harry thinks that he should probably not be flying so close to the canopy, but he doesn’t adjust his flight path. Even after all the times he’s almost died, part of him still craves the burst of adrenaline that comes with being in danger and surviving, and it’s not a feeling he gets often as a teacher. The birdcalls are almost deafening this close to the trees, much louder than usual; Harry pauses and looks down, sees multiple nests holding squawking baby birds.

“Of course,” he murmurs to himself. The edges of the Forbidden Forest are affected by the contraceptive wards too; these birds, like the owls in the castle, have taken advantage of the wards being down to mate, and now their young are loudly clamoring for attention.

Thinking about the wards inevitably turns Harry’s mind back to Draco, and his spirits are low as he guides his broom back towards the ground. He’d like to keep flying, but he didn’t eat breakfast and he’s starting to get really hungry. He thinks about what he’ll have for lunch as he walks towards the castle, not paying attention to where he’s going, which is how he almost runs into McGonagall.

“Harry,” she says, frowning at him as he stumbles back and apologizes. She seems unruffled by their near-collision, idly adjusting one cuff of her robes. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, fine,” Harry says, cutting his eyes between McGonagall and Hermione, who stands beside her. She’s looking at the ground, not meeting his eyes, which is a sure sign that she’s trying not to laugh at him.

“We were told by some students that Professor Potter was flying around looking mopey,” Hermione says, a note of teasing in her voice. Harry switches his broom to the other hand, hoping his nervousness isn’t too obvious. _Mopey_ isn’t the word he would have chosen, but, well—he’s certainly having an unusual morning, and if he’s reluctant to have Hermione find out why, he’s absolutely petrified of McGonagall knowing.

“Just wanted to get some fresh air,” he explains. “I was going to use the pitch, but it was occupied.” He furrows his brow. “Were you looking for me?”

McGonagall opens her mouth to say something, but Hermione—shockingly—cuts her off. “I was—Ron and I are going to The Three Broomsticks for lunch, and we thought you might like to come along. Need a break from working on ward restoration, you know.”

Harry looks at McGonagall, certain there is something else she’d been planning on saying, but she merely nods along. “As always, thank you for your help, Hermione.” She raises a hand in farewell as she leaves them without saying another word.

“That was odd,” Harry says to Hermione. She just shrugs, but Harry thinks he can detect a hint of color on her cheeks.

“The Three Broomsticks—you coming? I told Ron we’d be there at one.”

It’s quarter to, so Harry hurries to put his broom back in his rooms before rejoining Hermione for the walk into Hogsmeade. When they get to the Three Broomsticks, Ron greets them with a hug for Harry and a kiss for Hermione.

Settling into the booth across from his two best friends, Harry’s heart twists with longing. They look so comfortable, Ron’s arm casually thrown over Hermione’s shoulders as he peruses his menu one-handed. As Harry reads his own menu, Hermione peppers Ron with questions about their bathroom renovation (yes, the shower is done), the garden (he brought the bean plants inside before the first frost), and their two Kneazles (missing Hermione, but otherwise fine). Harry knows that with Hermione staying at the castle and working every day on solving the ward problem, she and Ron haven’t had much time to catch up, so he understands there are things they need to talk about. But at the same time, he’s annoyed. None of these topics have anything to do with him—he hadn’t even known they were redoing their bathroom—and it irks him that they have to be discussed now, when it’s the three of them, instead of later in private. Why even invite him to lunch if they weren’t going to try and talk to him?

Of course, as soon as Hermione and Ron’s focus shifts from each other onto Harry, he regrets his earlier thoughts.

Ron frowns at him, expression speculative. “Are you alright, Harry? You look a bit peaky.”

“Just cold,” Harry says, rubbing his hands together for good measure. When Hermione looks at him flatly, he realizes he might be overplaying it. “I went flying this morning.”

“According to a few third years, Professor Potter looked very mopey,” Hermione says, her mouth twisting into a moue of amusement it didn’t have when she shared that information earlier.

“Mopey!” Ron says. “What for?”

“Nothing,” Harry says, hoping his voice sounds normal. He rolls his eyes. “I didn’t realize random students were now the experts on my mood.”

“You know we’re just teasing.” Hermione reaches across the table to grab Harry’s hand; he squeezes back briefly before disengaging, hiding his hands under the table. “Really, though, Harry, are you sure you’re alright?”

Desperately searching his mind for something to tell them, Harry latches onto something real. 

“Tibby gave birth last night.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Ron says.

Hermione does a double-take. “Tibby was pregnant?”

“Draco’s Quandum knocked her up now that the contraceptive wards are down,” Harry explained.

“If she just gave birth, shouldn’t you be taking care of her?” Ron asks

“Quandums are marsupials, Ron.” Hermione’s voice implies that this is all she needs to say. She’s caught on remarkably quickly for someone who didn’t even know Tibby had been pregnant.

“And?” Ron asks. “What difference does that make?”

“Baby marsupials do most of their development in the pouch, not the womb,” Harry explains. “In fact, the pouch is more like a womb than most people realize. The joey is basically a fetus when it’s born, and it will spend the next several months latched on to one of Tibby’s nipples before it grows large enough to venture into the outside world.”

Ron blinks at him. “A little bit more information than I needed, thanks, mate.”

“You asked,” Harry says, a bit cross.

“Basically, even though she’s given birth, her health and energy is the same at this point as one-month-pregnant placental mammal,” Hermione explains. “So she’ll be fine without Harry around for a while yet.”

“Still.” Harry shrugs. “It’s exciting.”

“Did you tell Malfoy?” Ron asks, leaning over the table to get closer to Harry. The process makes his arm drop from Hermione’s shoulders, and she grabs his hand instead, pulling it onto her leg, it looks like. Another pang of loneliness hits Harry’s chest. Sometimes he gets tired of feeling so solitary.

“Yeah, I did,” Harry says, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Actually, he came over and watched the birth.”

Hermione’s eyebrows are practically in her hairline. “You invited him over?”

“Well, yes.” Harry feels like he’s under interrogation, but that’s only because he knows he has something to hide. Neither Hermione nor Ron have any reason to suspect that Harry and Draco fucked last night. “It’s a special moment, right? I mean, how often are you going to see something like that?”

Ron shrugs, sitting back in his seat. “Fair enough.”

“What was it like?” It’s Hermione’s turn to lean forward, eager to learn more. “Were you able to see everything?”

“I mean, yeah,” Harry says. Even though this topic should be safe, he still doesn’t like the scrutiny. “We were pretty close, we were able to see the joey as it climbed.”

“Merlin!” Hermione exclaims, pressing a hand to her mouth. “That sounds so interesting.”

“You should have invited her over, too,” Ron jokes. Harry has to force himself to laugh.

Hermione bats Ron’s arm with her free hand. “Excuse me for being interested in news about one of the only Quandums in Britain.”

“Would have been the only one if Malfoy weren’t such a tosser,” Harry mutters, because he’s feeling uncharitable after waking up alone.

“Speak of the devil,” Ron says, and Harry glances over his shoulder to see Draco entering the pub with—is that Millicent Bulstrode?

“No!” Harry groans and slides down in the booth as low as he can, crossing fingers and toes that Draco hasn’t seen them. Both Hermione and Ron are looking at him like he’s crazy. “I can’t see him right now,” Harry says, aware that he’s doing nothing to counter their assumptions.

“I thought you were trying to be friends with him now?” Ron asks.

“Harry, you were just telling us that you invited him over to your rooms _last night._ ”

Harry’s face burns. “Shh!” He glances over his shoulder again, certain Draco and Bulstrode will have noticed them with Ron and Hermione being so loud, but they’ve remained undetected. “That was different—that was for Tibby and Mephisto.”

He’s still bright red, but luckily neither of them say anything. Ron asks Hermione about the wards, and five minutes later when she stops to take a breath, Harry speaks up.

He taps the table, nerves thrumming in his fingers. “Um, are they still in here?”

Hermione looks confused. “What?”

“Malfoy and Bulstrode, were they seated behind us?” Harry resist the urge to crane his neck and look for them again.

Hermione looks around, a small frown coming over her face. Ron shakes his head. “I think they left, mate. Maybe the place was too crowded?”

It not being a Hogsmeade weekend for students, the Three Broomsticks could hardly be called crowded, but Harry doesn’t want to open up a discussion with his friends about why Draco is avoiding him. He just nods, and looks down at his drink, drifting in and out of focus as Hermione and Ron continue to hold a conversation without him.

***

“You’re a saint,” Draco says, leaning over the rickety table to squeeze Millie’s hand. “Seriously, thank you.” He keeps his voice quiet because otherwise it would echo in the pub, and he feels too vulnerable here, like any second someone might jump out from under a table with a wand pointed at him.

Millie brushes a not-so-invisible spot of crumbs off of the table. “Of course,” she says, looking around the Hog’s Head with disdain. Aside from the witch at the bar and a wizard slumped at a table in the far corner of the room, looking like he might be asleep or worse, they are the only ones in the room. Millie takes a sip of her whiskey, mouth twisting at the taste as she swallows. “What are friends for if not standing by you when you run away from your one night stands?”

Draco flushes, opening his mouth to protest and then thinking better of it. What is he going to say, anyway? It’s not like Millie is wrong. He and Harry have history, sure, but in this moment the source of awkwardness is the fact that they’d fucked last night, unplanned, and then Draco had snuck away in the morning.

Harry might be mad, Draco reasons. Or he might be relieved. That’s why he left, really—because when he woke up in Harry’s bed, he had no idea how Harry would react to him being there. Harry was sprawled across the bed, relaxed in sleep, and Draco was torn between the desire to lay down and fall back asleep beside him, or wake him up with a kiss for a repeat of last night. As Draco watched, though, he came back to himself. They’d never stayed the night after any of their previous dalliances, and Harry had said nothing about it the night before. Draco would be overstaying his welcome if he was still there when Harry woke up, Draco told himself, even knowing that it was an excuse.

On his way out the door, he’d passed Mephistopheles and Tibby, curled up together on the sofa while Tibby slept. Mephisto was awake, watching Draco with steady pale eyes. It took a bit of convincing (and bribing him with one of the treats Harry kept on the counter for Tibby), but Draco convinced Mephistopheles to leave with him.

Millie had to bully him via Floo to convince him not to cancel on her for lunch, so she hadn’t protested when Draco walked into the Three Broomsticks, saw Harry and his friends, and immediately turned around.

As the full weight of the situation hits him again, Draco buries his face in his hands. “I shouldn’t have left like that,” he says. “It’s not like I can avoid him forever, and now things will be more awkward when I do have to interact with him.” He rests his head on one palm, looking at Millie despairingly. “But would it have been more awkward to wake up with him and deal with the whole morning-after thing?”

“There’s no use worrying about that now,” Millie points out. “What’s done is done.”

“You’re right.” Draco shakes his head at her. “Why are you always right?”

“It’s a gift.”

“Really, I shouldn’t have slept with him.”

Millie shrugs. “No argument there, but you can’t change the past.”

Draco laughs, torn between amusement and offense. “You think I shouldn’t have slept with him? What happened to ‘what’s done is done?’”

“It’s still true,” Millie says. “I don’t think you should be beating yourself up about it. But, Draco.” She leans in, folding her arms on the edge of the table. “You have to admit it wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve done.”

Draco frowns. “I know.”

“I mean, I understand why you did it.” Millie picks up her glass and gestures with it, seeming not to notice when a bit of whisky splashes over the rim and onto the table. “It was late, you’d just witnessed the miracle of birth. You’ve never been able to resist Potter even under the least romantic circumstances, and those were hardly unromantic.” Draco pulls a face, and Millie quirks an eyebrow. “You disagree?”

“I wouldn’t use the word _romantic._ ”

“You wouldn’t?”

Draco shrugs. “That seems to imply there’s something more there, doesn’t it? Our relationship is purely physical.”

Millie rolls her eyes and makes an audible sound of disbelief. “Oh please.”

“What?”

“Your relationship may not be romantic in the sense of roses and candlelight, but it’s _not_ just physical. If he were just a good fuck, you wouldn’t have been obsessed with him since we were eleven, and it wouldn’t have bothered you so much when he started working at Hogwarts and you lost touch with him.”

Draco crosses his arms. “Just say what you’re trying to say, Millie.”

“You like him, Draco. Is that such a terrible thing to admit?”

Suddenly Draco’s heart is in his throat, and he’s afraid his voice might break when he speaks. “Maybe,” he manages finally, and Millie’s face melts into something more sympathetic, or maybe pitying. Draco’s already feeling sorry enough for himself; he doesn’t need her to join the party too.

“I think you should talk to him,” Millie says. “Like I say every time we talk about this.”

“It’s not that simple, Millie.”

“It could be!” Millie pauses, seeming to be debating the next thing she says. “I don’t think the situation is as hopeless as you think it is, Draco.”

He scoffs. “And what makes you think that?”

She raises one eyebrow. “You didn’t see the way he looked when you walked into the pub earlier.”

****

**Sunday**

At breakfast this morning—which Harry ventured down to with extreme reluctance, thanking whatever gods had taken pity on him when Draco wasn’t there—McGonagall approached him and reminded him sternly about his assigned time to monitor the Ravenclaw common room that evening. He would have been dreading it even without how complicated things currently were with Draco, but McGonagall made it clear that Harry wasn’t going to get out of this, so at nine o’clock he pats Tibby on the head, slips on his shoes, and starts toward Ravenclaw Tower.

Halfway there Tibby comes trotting up behind him, having apparently decided she doesn’t want to be left alone tonight after all. She jumps up on her hind legs to paw at Harry’s thigh, and he scratches between her ears. “If you come in with me, you can’t go exploring the students’ rooms,” he tells her, although they probably wouldn’t mind; for all Harry knows, Tibby’s secret animal ways have gotten her into Ravenclaw Tower without his knowledge before. He wouldn’t put it past her—once a frantic house-elf appeared in his living room to request he come fetch Tibby from the kitchens because she wouldn’t get out of one of the ovens, and they needed to use it to make dinner.

Harry is glad to have Tibby at his side as he approaches the unmarked door to the common room and sees Draco leaning against the wall. Mephisto has done the same as Tibby, and is playing with some sort of insect—a spider?—in the crack where the floor meets the wall. Tibby trots over and playfully bats him on the head to get his attention; Harry drags his eyes away from where the Quandums are greeting each other, forcing himself to face Draco.

He looks good—but then who is Harry kidding, he always looks good. He’s opted for a more casual look since they’ll be up all night, although not quite as casual as Harry’s joggers and trainers.

“Right on time,” Draco says, not quite meeting Harry’s eyes. He turns around quickly as Harry gets closer, rapping the knocker three times very fast. The eagle on the knocker shakes itself to life, ruffling bronze feathers as though annoyed to be disturbed, and opens its beak.

“I’m at the beginning of the end and the start of eternity, at the end of time and space, in the middle of yesterday but nowhere in tomorrow. What am I?”

Draco rolls his eyes before answering, which Harry thinks is a risky move. “The letter e. I thought these were supposed to be difficult?”

The eagle lets out what must be its approximation of a laugh; it sounds like coins being shaken in a jar. “The Headmistress requested I go easy on those who are not in this House,” it says. “Enter.”

The door swings open, and Harry follows Draco inside, Tibby and Mephisto slipping in behind them at the last moment.

There are only a few clusters of students scattered around the large and airy room, and Harry and Draco’s entrance garners barely any attention. A sixth-year boy sitting near the door looks up at them and says, voice flat, “Oh, it’s you two today.” One of the other students at the table—a Prefect, Harry thinks, but she’s not in any of his classes—smacks him on the arm.

“Hi, Professor Malfoy,” she says, and is Harry imagining things or is there a hint of a blush across her cheeks? “The other professors have been sitting over there.” She nods to a set of two armchairs with a table between them along the far wall. Draco thanks her by name before they make their way over.

Tibby and Mephisto have been sidetracked by a group of first-years who are happily gathering on the floor around the two Quandums, so there’s nothing to break the awkwardness as Harry and Draco sit down next to each other. Draco pulls out a stack of papers, and Harry feels like an idiot, because he didn’t bring anything to keep himself occupied.

After a few minutes of silence, Draco glances at him sidelong. “Aren’t you going to work on something?”

“I didn’t bring anything,” Harry says reluctantly. It would be short work to run back to his room and grab his satchel, but McGonagall had instructed them both to stay in the common room the entire night.

With a frown, Draco bends over to rifle through his own bag. Harry tries not to stare at the line of his spine, too aware of the students around them who could be cataloguing his every move. A minute later Draco sits back up, thrusting a thick magazine at Harry’s chest.

“You can read this if you want,” he says. “I don’t have anything else.”

Upon further inspection, it’s a journal, not a magazine. _Modern Defense_ is emblazoned across the top in block letters, and on the front there’s a stylized drawing of a witch and a wizard dueling.

“Thanks,” Harry says, flipping it open. He’s not hugely interested in Defense these days, but he finds a few interesting articles to read, including an interview with Kingsley about his time in the Auror Corps. Just before ten there’s an influx of students into the room—coming back from the library before curfew—and a lot of them hang around in the room for the next hour or so, finishing up homework and chatting with friends, before heading up to their respective dorms. Harry starts giving the magazine half of his attention, making sure that all the students are going into the correct dorms as they make their ways upstairs. McGonagall told them that students were more likely to try and sneak into other dorms after lights were out, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.

By midnight, Harry and Draco are alone in the room. Ravenclaws must go to sleep earlier than Gryffindors, or maybe everyone’s exhausted since it’s a Sunday, Harry thinks, because he’s fairly certain the Gryffindor Common Room would never be empty so early. In the dark, the wide windows that provide a beautiful vista of the grounds during the day become almost haunting. Harry can see himself and Draco reflected back at him from multiple angles, with the foreboding nighttime sky as their backdrop.

Draco sighs loudly, dropping his stack of papers on the table with a _thwap_ and twisting his body into a deep stretch. Harry carefully directs his eyes away from the strip of skin that’s exposed when Draco raises his arms. With just the two of them in the room, it’s taken on an ephemeral feeling, like they’re floating above the school, lost to the rest of the world. Like their actions don’t have consequences.

He’s noticed that Draco hasn’t looked directly at him the whole night. That continues as Draco busies himself putting his papers away—he must have finished with what he’d brought. Harry’s left the copy of _Modern Defense_ on the table, and Draco puts that away as well. Then he slumps down in his chair, drumming his fingers on his stomach. It’s such an un-Draco-like position that laughter bubbles up in Harry’s throat.

Draco turns to look at him sharply. “What?”

“Nothing,” Harry says, shaking his head.

Draco sighs, thumping his head against the wall behind him. “I’m already tired. I don’t know how I’m going to stay up all night,” he says.

Harry grins. “That’s what I’m prepared for,” he says, and stands up to remove the miniature picnic basket the house-elves had given him that afternoon from his pocket. When he spells it back to regular size, Draco gapes at him. When he opens it, revealing several thermoses of coffee and tea, as well as three bags of crisps and an assortment of biscuits and digestives, Draco smiles with glee.

“Brilliant.”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Oh, yes, please,” Draco says, actually meeting Harry’s gaze when Harry hands him the mug. His grey eyes are shining with delight, and Harry fumbles the thermos, spilling tea onto the plush, blue carpet.

“Fuck!”

“It’s alright.” Draco kneels to siphon the stain out with his wand before settling back down in his chair. He shivers with pleasure after his first sip. “This hits the spot perfectly. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry mumbles. His cheeks are hot, and not just from the mug of coffee he’s cradling between his hands. Draco looks wonderfully comfortable like this, and Harry’s heart strains in his chest, beating hard as though it wants to lead the rest of Harry’s body closer to Draco.

Draco bends one leg, wrapping his arm around his shin and resting his head on his knee. “How long do you think until we get our first escape artists?”

Harry laughs. “Dunno. We might not get any at all.”

Draco rolls his head to the side, watching Harry with one eye. “I doubt that.”

“You never know. It didn’t sound like anyone tried yesterday.”

“But someone had to have taken down Minerva’s spells in the first place,” Draco points out.

Harry shrugs. “I’m surprised they’re still trying at all, now that they know there are professors stationed in the Common Room.”

“When it comes to sex and lust, people don’t always do what’s best for them,” Draco says.

That puts a damper on the conversation. Harry’s coffee sloshes around in his empty stomach as he stares at the arm of his chair, tracing the fleur-de-lis pattern in the fabric with his thumb. No need to ask Draco if he thinks Friday night was a mistake, then.

“I mean.” Draco clears his throat, speaking with great reluctance. “Sometimes one finds that they want to do something too badly to consider why it may not be the best idea.”

Harry frowns, turning to look at Draco, but he’s avoiding Harry’s gaze again, sipping his coffee with his eyes closed like it requires great concentration. Harry’s heart does an ungraceful flop in his chest. Is Draco saying what Harry thinks he’s saying?

“Seems like a very Slytherin way of viewing things,” is what finally comes out of Harry’s mouth.

Draco’s obviously confused. “What?”

“A Gryffindor would say,” Harry tells him, “that sometimes you have to try something scary, even if there may be consequences, if it’s something that you really want to do.”

Draco’s mouth drops open, his eyes wide with shock. “Harry,” he says.

“Are you saying you regret it?” Harry asks, digging his fingernails into his palm to stop his hand from shaking. “Because I don’t.”

“I’m not,” Draco says. “I mean, I don’t.” He shakes his head, laughing at himself. “You stopped returning my owls when you left for Scotland.”

“I know.”

“I thought we had something.” Draco’s eyes are steely grey. “I thought we were both interested in seeing where it would go, and then you just…dropped me.”

“I was scared,” Harry admits in a whisper. “Sometimes I’m not very good at being a Gryffindor after all.”

“Scared of what?”

“Of you. What I felt for you.”

Draco breathes out hard, biting his lip. Like he’s making a big decision, he reaches out to take Harry’s hand. Harry’s certain it’s a sweaty mess, but he doesn’t pull back, and Draco doesn’t recoil in disgust either, which is a good sign.

“We should probably get better at communicating,” Draco says.

Harry laughs a little. “Right. Right. Wait.” He swallows. “You are saying you want to try something with me, right? Now? That you had feelings too, and they haven’t gone away?”

“Despite my best attempts to make them,” Draco says crisply, and Harry has to laugh.

Setting his coffee down, he reaches out to grab Draco’s shoulders. “Draco Malfoy, do you want to actually give this a go?”

Draco’s hand finds it’s now-familiar place at the back of Harry’s neck. “I really do.”

Harry smiles as Draco leans in to kiss him, sweet and happy and—when his tongue sneaks into Harry’s mouth—a little dirty. He’s enjoying the kiss, so he’s suitably startled when Draco abruptly pulls back, whipping his head to face away from Harry.

“What are you doing?” he hisses, and Harry almost replies _kissing you?_ before he realizes Draco isn’t talking to him.

The seventh year girl who has one foot on the bottom step leading up to the boys’ dormitories freezes. “Um.”

Harry tries to arrange his face into something resembling seriousness. Draco raises one haughty eyebrow. “If you go back to your room now, and don’t mention this to the Headmistress, I won’t take any house points away.”

She scampers back to her room, and Draco turns back to Harry with a grin. “Now. Where were we?”

Harry answers by pulling him in for another kiss.

****

** Four Months Later **

**  
**

****

**Saturday**

“Here, Blue,” Harry says, leaning down and wiggling one of the dried turkey treats Luna gave them. The baby Quandum wobbles across the floor towards him, her short legs not yet able to keep up with the speed she wants to travel. Granger claps, delighted, as Azura finally reaches Harry and takes the treat from him, dropping it from her mouth onto the ground so she can eat it slowly. The others laugh, and Tibby pushes her head into Millie’s hand, demanding more pets, as if she knows they are all praising something she grew. Mephistopheles, sprawled half on Draco’s lap, twitches his tail as he watches the scene.

“She’s adorable,” Weasley says. When she finishes her treat, he wiggles his fingers to get Azura’s attention, and she lets him scratch her head. “And such an interesting color.”

Granger nods in agreement. It’s true—Azura had emerged from the pouch a brilliant sky blue, not matching either of her parents. Harry had explained that it was so her mother would easily be able to find her in the wild, and that it would fade to a more muted coat like Tibby’s as she got older. That had been on Tuesday, when they were woken up by Tibby padding across their chests—not an unusual event—but upon opening their eyes, they had found both Tibby and the baby Quandum watching them. Today is the first day that their friends were able to come and meet Azura; Draco is glad that she’s been out of the pouch since they arrived. Although Azura has an adventurous soul, Tibby hasn’t been letting her out for extended periods of time, and only when they are safely inside Draco or Harry’s rooms; the rest of the time she keeps her in the pouch, going so far as to pick her up by the scruff of her neck and tuck her away when the joey won’t listen.

“She’s a gorgeous color,” Millie says, and the others murmur in agreement.

“That’s what makes her name suit her so perfectly,” Draco says, catching Harry’s eye and grinning. Harry rolls his eyes, but Weasley doesn’t notice, taking Draco’s bait.

“What is her name, anyway?

“Azura.”

“Blue.”

Harry glares at him. Draco laughs.

“Wait.” Millie looks between the two of them in confusion. “What?”

“There’s been some disagreement,” Draco begins.

“Draco is bad at choosing names,” Harry interrupts. “He wanted to name her _Caerulea._ ”

“It’s a beautiful name! It means ‘blue’ in Latin,” Draco explains. “It’s better than literally naming her _Blue._ ”

“It suits her,” Harry says, distracting Azura with another treat and directing her attention away from Weasley and back to him. “She likes it. See? Here, Blue.”

Granger shakes her head, laughing. “She likes that you’re feeding her, Harry.”

“Azura is sophisticated,” Draco sniffs. “Elegant.”

“She’s just a baby, she doesn’t need to be elegant.”

“But when she gets older—”

“The important thing,” Millie says, pitching her voice to cover Draco’s, “is that we all got to come here and meet her! And aren’t you a sweetheart,” she says. “Your mama did such a good job creating you.”

Tibby yips.

“She’s certainly curious,” Hermione says, redirecting Azura’s questing nose away from the opening of her handbag, which is sitting on the floor by the sofa.

“It’s a shame she won’t have any siblings,” Weasley adds.

“Well, the wards are back up now,” Harry says, with a flat look at Granger. She smiles beatifically. When the wards were restored just over a month after they’d fallen, Harry found out that Granger was delaying some of her work on them in order to keep pushing Draco and Harry into situations where they had to spend time together. Harry was upset when he found out, although luckily, with Weasley acting as an intermediary, the dispute hadn’t lasted long. Luckily, also, both he and Harry were very pleased with the result of Granger’s meddling, and couldn’t really hold it against her that they were finally giving a proper relationship a try.

And it’s been going well, Draco muses, as he watches Harry pet Azura, now settled on his lap and exploring his jumper. She tries to climb up his chest and Harry laughs, plucking her off and setting her on his knee; Ron leans in to whisper something to him and he chuckles, catching Draco’s eye across the room. His gaze warms, and he smiles the private smile that Draco knows belongs only to him. It makes his stomach twist happily. It’s only been a few months, but after years of fantasizing about a relationship with Harry, he’s surprised how well the reality has lived up to his expectations.

“See,” Harry says, holding Azura up next to his face. Tibby’s ears flick up, on alert, but she trusts Harry enough to wait and see what he’s doing with her child. Harry has Azura sitting in his hand, and gently moves her front paws so she looks like she’s posing or modeling. “Doesn’t she look like a Blue to you?”

Their friends explode with laughter, and Draco just shakes his head. “I don’t know why I put up with you,” he says fondly.

Harry smiles. “But I’m glad you do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! You can show your appreciation for the author in a comment below. ♥
> 
> This story is part of HD Erised, an on-going anonymous fest. The author will be revealed January 10th.


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